A Circle of Fate and Pain
by Elliot Bowers
Summary: A girl genius rebuilt the replicate Sieben. Now Sieben lives with her just beyond the city limits of Scrap Iron City, coming to the city for money and fun once a week. Except this time, their lives may not be the same: not ever again, and again....
1. Chapter 1

_A Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 1 –The First Rotation

_Never mind..._my brain-shaped bowl of flan--delicious, precious flan! The shape is appropriate regarding what has occurred. The same is true for what shall occur again. It is therefore very fitting to the procedure. Speaking of procedure, did you calibrate the capacitors? We do not want her brain undergoing the results of electroshock therapy. After all, it is seldom that I have fully sponsored opportunities to work with a true brain born of Zalem! In fact, this is the only fully sanctioned opportunity thus far. Mmm... _Gulp!_

Now, take this. You over there by the auxiliary keyboard! What are you doing now, Jack? You shall refresh my next two bowls of flan, delicious flan. Do not look so surly. There will be further opportunities for participation in this experimentation.

The experiment commences yet again, and again! And in the _end, _the results should prove to be as interesting as the beginning. After all, end and beginning shall seem to be especially similar! Or have I said far too much already? That would perhaps damage the data. Or karma shall determine the extent of the data. Yes, it is that button there. I deliberately made the _Restart _button to be _large, red and circular _as so one may not miss it given eventualities that may occur.

Note, we utilize the brain of a social deviant and criminal--a human female brain--which has a karmic value may or may not be diminished. The capacitors calibrated and the processors are online. You shall..._perform your function, and I shall resume observing the data recorded while also resuming my consumption of this...tender, scrumptious...wonderful flan in a brain-shaped bowl. Mmm.. _

"_Ai-i-a-a-agh!" _screamed the girl, suddenly sitting up on the sofa. Her big, gold-colored eyes went _bigger _on seeing what was reaching for her forehead. She _slapped _at those metal claws that were _trying to take her brain!_ "_No-o-o-o!_"

This girl with strangely colored eyes, she was petite and quick--especially since the fear of death added speed and agility to her body! She rolled away from the menacing metal claws and hit the floor--then hopped over the low coffee table. This was followed by the sound of her quick feet pattering as she dashed for a corner of the room—where her hands slapped the wall to keep herself from hitting her head on it. The girl then quickly turned and crouched down into the corner, watching the eyes that watched _her. _

"_Kyrie, stop this crazy stuff right now! You'll run into something and hurt yourself!"_ screamed a metal-bodied female--a pale-faced sort with a head of straight dark hair, night-colored eyes to match. From the neck down, her feminine body was made of metal parts--metal sections and curves--a fast body that also allowed agility. However, the agility of her well-engineered robotic body was not immediately enough to catch one particularly fast and frightened girl on the first try. For lack of a better name, she was called Sieben.

When it seemed as if the girl in the corner of the living room was set to dash away again, Sieben quickly moved ahead of the anticipated direction. The thing to do was catchKyrie without hurting her. No, Sieben would _never _hurt Kyrie, would make sure no one would hurt the girl.

Except, Kyrie wasn't listening, her eyes were wide with a nightmare that only she could see. That look of fear made her seem more like a child to be cradled and cared for rather than the young adult she was. Her vaguely playful outfit of shorts and leotard-top made her seem even younger and delicate than she actually was: the shorts leaving her legs bare and exposed, the leotard top clinging close to her torso, exposing her lithe arms. Long, pale-silk hair curtained down from her scalp, the sides of her hair framing her face while the rest cascaded down her back—nearly to her hips. As for why her hair was _that _color since she was born and why her eyes were that way…

It was because Kyrie was a mutant. She had slight changes in her genetics that made her...different. Luckily, most of the results of the genetic mutation were enough to make her just this side of pretty—eyes that were slightly larger than usual, and long silky hair color of moonbeams, a lean physique with the proportions of a living doll. Also true was how she was a great deal more intelligent from an early age. Genetic mutations could just as easily have made her a savage _monster. _And with the more disturbing genetic defects she had been born with, that had been fixed with surgery days after her birth. Kyrie was lucky in most ways, even if she did have occasional problems: some days when she was feeling too sick to eat solid foods, or fits of fear or anger when she was too frightened or too violent to deal with. Lucky though she was in many ways, she was also unlucky.

Right now, Kyrie was having another one of those fits where her nightmares of sleep seemed too real. She didn't _want _to be gripped by metal arms, thinking that someone was out to harm her! "_Stay away, you monster of metal! My brain is my own!" _she shrieked. "I shall _not_ surrender to your master's mad experiment! I never shall! My brain would be extremely uncooperative. _Then _where will your master's experiment be! It shall be…" _Swish!_ "_No! Release me, monster!_"

In that moment, Sieben had already made her move. She made two machine-fast steps and wrapped her arms around Kyrie while the girl was distracted by her own talk. Of course the girl didn't just accept being held and began struggling in the metal-armed grip. "Stop it, Kyrie!" shouted the metal-bodied female. "Like, nobody here is a monster, okay? So _cool it, _will you! It was just a nightmare _Just a nightmare!_" Kyrie only squirmed some more in response. _Oh no. I don't want to hurt her, but I don't want to let her go..._

"_Monsters, all of you!_" screamed Kyrie as the robotic arm-hold remained firm--seemed to tighten. "Your master wishes for the dissection and obliteration of my brain! Who are you to harm people for the sake of experimentation? I want to _live as myself!_"

Sieben absolutely _hated_ it whenever Kyrie was like this. She said into Kyrie's right ear, "Like, _ple-e-ease!_ _Please _don't be like this! Look around. Nobody is here to take your brain. You're in your very own living room, for goodness' sake. Just..._look!_"

In her struggles, some of Kyrie's own hair had fallen across her right eye to obscure her vision. Yet she was still able to do what was suggested. She looked...around... Indeed, this _was _her very own living room. There was the low metal coffee table set in front of the sofa at the center of the room. A bookshelf was against the right-side wall. At the left wall was a shelf with entertainment machinery--the machinery Kyrie herself had made with parts bought from Scrap Iron City. "So... It's _okay_," said Sieben, her voice soothing. Kyrie's trembling eased. "I'd never let anybody hurt you, _never. _As long as I'm still alive, I'll keep you safe."

With those words said, Kyrie was coming back to herself--a return of sense of self and place. Her house, yes... This is home. Home, here, it was a converted two-story industrial structure set in a bordering strip of land, between the "Scrapyard" region and Scrap Iron City. If a person walked out the back-door, they could look beyond the fence-off back yard to see the hills and mountains of metal parts and such--a landscape of metal junk stretching off into the horizon, more hills and mountains of metal with Zalem up above and far away in the distance. Going out the front door, a person could see the rectangular and jutting cityscape of Scrap Iron City--where there were machines and people, smokestacks billowing smoke from machine-buildings. That was where she went with Sieben most every day--going into Scrap Iron City for fun and for trade.

The difference between this place and any other place was how _this place is home_, memories to go with it. Kyrie had lived here all of her life, having grown up here and stayed here even after her father went away. Even then, the girl carried on the salvage trade that her father had practiced--this trade of finding decent machine-parts among the mountains of metal junk and selling them in the city. It was easy to do since she helped her father with the trade by fixing some of the things scavenged from the wastelands. She was just so smart with machines...

Kyrie was somehow able to teach herself how to read technical manuals from Scrap Iron City, along with even bigger discarded books said to be from Zalem. Scratchy recordings on recording machines helped connect the spoken words with the written ones. The books were primarily technical, and so Kyrie's knowledge grew in that direction. Repairing and even _improving _the scavenged parts and machinery was how Kyrie was able to add to the value of what her father found--and what she would continue finding. In fact, being good with machinery had allowed her to repair Sieben--the female replicate who was now holding and comforting her, hugging her. "I am fine. Just as you say everything is fine," said Kyrie to her metal-bodied friend.

"Okay. I'll let you go...so long as you don't run into stuff and bump your head," said Sieben. "Not that I'm after your _brain _or anything." That said, she opened her arms—let go. "You had me worried there."

She watched as Kyrie managed to stand again. Except Kyrie was still quivering a little, her eyes still dancing a little with worry. There were still lingering traces of fear and worry within her… Sieben still wanted to hug Kyrie and help make her worry and pain go away. She moved to approach with arms outspread…

Except the girl put up her right hand, a _stop _gesture. "No... No... I truly I am okay. Why is it that you stare so?" To prove how much she had recovered, she spread her arms—then did a spritely ballerina's spin, a pirouette on one foot. Stopping her spin, she put both feet to the floor and lowered her arms. "Do you see? I am feeling steady enough to do _that_. Now, if you please, _do _allow me to my bedroom as so I may refresh my clothing and bathe for a second time this day. I am to at least make some form of effort to look more presentable in light of today's business with Mr. Okotonz..."

"Yeah, the city," agreed Sieben, lowering her arms. "I've got my outfit ready. So I'll be ready when you are." There was no need for a hug, then. She then watched as Kyrie walked past her to go for the stairs.

Kyrie's bedroom was upstairs on the third floor of this building. Sieben herself lived in a side-room on the second floor. That, most all the other rooms in this building were filled with automated machine-tools, spare parts and other equipment that Kyrie used for her various activities with machinery: repairs, experiments and maintenance. This living room was one of the few rooms _not _with machinery along the walls.

Sitting in the corner a moment more, Sieben went over to the sofa and coffee table to pick up the wet cloth she had used to cool Kyrie's feverish forehead. That item in hand, she also picked up the metal bowl filled with cold water--then carrying both these items to the kitchen built by Kyrie's father and improved by Kyrie herself. There was a small water-sink and faucet against a wall and next to the round kitchen table. This house--and its kitchen--had been kept neat and clean with morning bouts of scrubbing and maintenance.

The water in the bowl was poured into the sink, down the drain, before Sieben turned on the tap—to start washing and rinsing out the bowl itself. The water coming out of the faucet came up from pipes connected to a water-tank in the first-level basement. It was purified water from one of the huge pipes that went underground towards Scrap Iron City. Sieben didn't know the technical details of the stuff, but Kyrie and her father had rigged up some kinds of machines to the water-tank to keep the water pure. It had something to do with catalysts, plasma-heat and stuff, something like that… Sieben didn't know. Kyrie said that the water purification machinery she refurbished was probably once part of a space-ship. The same was true for the machines that generated electrical energy for the rest of this house--also in the basement.

About Kyrie helping... No, Sieben didn't forget. It was Kyrie who helped her after that fight with _that_ replicate. Sieben was almost totally destroyed--her body a wreck and shutting down. The next time she opened her eyes, there was a view of Kyrie standing next to that metal table in her home-made laboratory: a miracle, since the other replicate was rumored to have a bio-chip brain copied from Zalem's best TUNED Agents as a template. Sieben's own bio-chip brain was copied by a similar process. But Sieben wasn't a psycho killer-thing like that other replicate--_not _a killer! Sieben liked to be nice to people and didn't really want to fight. But that replicate _did _want to fight and loved fighting, liked to see the pain in others.

After the defeat, Kyrie saved Sieben's life... Well, a person could say that if a metal-bodied replicate could be called "alive." Now, staying with Kyrie was safer than living in Scrap Iron City itself--living among the machine-buildings and dense city streets with all of those down-trodden and sad people, some of whom were violent. If a person wasn't living in the poverty of being a machine-worker or something like that and barely earning enough money to live with, there was the fast-and-dangerous life of a bounty hunter or Motorball player. Other than the rare and occasional trouble with mutants from the mountains of junk or from the city, Kyrie's house was a nice and comfortable place to be. Kyrie also needed a bodyguard since her father went away. Since Kyrie's mother died when the girl was born, that left her essentially without a family.

As Sieben finished washing the metal bowl with her own metal hands and washing out the soft square of cloth, she had another moment of concern and worry about Kyrie. If something was to happen to herself--to Sieben--then Kyrie would be all alone in this building-house. That girl was very smart and clever with machines. But when it came to dealing with most people, she didn't have the same kind of success. Mutants were still looked at with hatred. While Kyrie was generally left alone, there were still times when heads turned to look whenever she was in the city—because she was a _mutant. _

People in Scrap Iron City were always on the lookout for mutants. _Mutants, _those were things born different and deformed. In a world where people with electromechanical bodies of all sizes and forms were just as acceptable as people with real bodies, _mutant _meant _monstrosity_. Even the word _mutant _was something grotesque and _wrong._ That was because mutants were very often grotesque monsters. Sometimes, if the severity of their deformities didn't kill them, they often grew up to maim, to _kill. _There were times when mutants were even killed just as they were born even if killing was one of the few laws of the city, laws enforced by the bounty hunters who were paid for taking the heads of declared criminals. The fear and hatred of mutants--stupid, ugly, violent, _monstrous_ mutants--did exist strongly enough to make people kill their own children.

Kyrie wasn't at all like what people said about mutants. She was _not_ one of those monsters that occasionally cropped up in neighborhoods to hurt and kill people. She was _not _violent and ugly. Kyrie was very smart and kind a person. And she _is_ pretty--her slight mutation giving her delicate and unusual beauty. Kyrie was the opposite of what most people thought of the word _mutant_.

Why did Kyrie choose to remain living in a lonely converted building just beyond the unofficial border of Scrap Iron City--away from the more habitable part of this region? Being different was why. With her big pretty eyes being _that _color and her hair being moonsilk-white, Kyrie's unusual beauty still made her _different_.

Still washing the things in the kitchen sink, Sieben began to wring water from the square of cloth as she continued wringing her thoughts of Kyrie. But it was just unfair to see Kyrie alone as an outcast--because Sieben was also something different. Sure, having a body of metal parts wasn't rare. Lots of people had to undergo body replacement with synthetics because of limb-severing injuries, flesh-rotting toxins in the environment, things things like that. But Sieben wasn't really a person. She was different _inside._

Nothing of Sieben was human, never had been human. Many of those people over in Scrap were _cyborgs_. They were once flesh-bodied, born with real brains in real bodies before becoming metal-bodied. There was not a brain inside Sieben's head. There was instead a thick, hexagonal computer chip.

It meant that Sieben maybe wasn't a real person—certainly not her robotic body, not even her bio-chip brain. Having a human brain meant that people could call themselves _people_. Even those stupid, repetitive Deckmen of the Factory buildings and those buzzy voiced Netmen had components of human brains as parts of their computer circuitry--even though people considered Deckmen and Netmen "robots."

Sieben's mind was never human--never had been, never will be. That made hera robot even if she just liked to think herself as a person and get along with things. Just pretending oneself to be human was how cyborgs got by. And there were times like these when Sieben couldn't pretend to be what she wasn't: a real person. Though Sieben knew that a human template had been used to model her mind, that did not make her human.

But Kyrie was human—beautifully human. "Mutant" or not, Kyrie was human--and very smart. Sieben had seen her do some very amazing things with what seemed like junk. With Kyrie's miraculous skill, old and broken machinery from the mountains of metal junk were suddenly made to work miracles. Her hands hands looked delicate but were very dexterous. All the machinery in this house was made and maintained, piece by piece, by Kyrie's doings with tools. The girl's brilliance with machinery was sometimes even a little frightening. How could such a delicate-looking girl with tender-looking hands do such amazing things with huge machines?

Never mind that. This replicate-girl rinsed and wrung out the square cloth once more before shutting off the tap. Then both the metal bowl and square of cloth went into a washing-drying machine next to the sink--also said to have been from a space-ship of long ago. Except, unlike most of the salvaged machinery, Kyrie said that the washing-drying machine came from a space-ship meant to destroy cities on Earth. Except now that spaceship was long gone: some of its parts used to make this house-building a cleaner place.

Kyrie didn't care about that, though. Machinery was what it was. And sometimes, machines are more reliable than people. People can be too narrow-minded and prejudiced. People can also be cruel. They can be cruel to others who are not like they are.

2.

Later, after making sure that the kitchen was clean, Sieben went to her room on the third floor. There she put on the outfit she planned on wearing to the city before coming back downstairs to wait for Kyrie. Now her outfit was one that revealed the outline of her body while concealing the metal surfaces: an outfit of tight jeans-pants and high-necked sleeveless top of elastic material. She put on a light jacket to conceal her arms. Gray boots went nearly up to her knees. Gloves went over her hands, and a purse went over her left shoulder. Her face was one of synthetic flesh, and the dark silky hair radiating from her scalp looked real: no need to cover that. Not that Sieben was particularly ashamed of not being human, it was just that she sometimes liked wearing outfits that didn't advertise what she was and let people see beauty rather than exposed metal.

When Kyrie came down the stairs, she ws dressed somewhat more casually for this trip to the city: another pair of jeans-shorts, along with a close-fitting sleeveless top. Like Sieben, Kyrie also put on a light sort of jacket—except she had rolled the sleeves to her elbows. Her long hair was out and cascading down the back of her jacket like a silken curtain of beauty. Though her jacket was unzipped and open, it was still able to conceal the additional pockets sewn inside that held some spare credits. More credits were in the messenger-bag--along with small cyborg parts that she would sell and trade in the city. Slung over her left shoulder was a messenger bag--something resembling a cross between a large purse and book-bag. Sturdy little sneakers on her feet completed the outfit.

The fact that Kyrie looked more dressed to go for a jog or walk around the house did not matter much to her. The girl tended not to care too much about clothing style--usually going for cut-off shorts and short-sleeved tops. After all, it was only Sieben who saw her most of the time.. But also true was how Kyrie had the sort dollish and delicate good looks that could make even the most beat-up clothes look like some kind of new fashion. "Are you ready to go?" she asked Sieben, adjusting the strap of the messenger bag.

…

Later, with both of them standing outside the house-building's front door, Kyrie used the metal keypad set next to the entrance. Her fine fingers dialed in a certain nine-digit number in a certain way. _Clack-clack... _Dialing in that combination made for a series of heavy motor-whirring and latch-clacking noises from within the house itself and at the back. It was the sound of the house locking itself.

"The house is safe," announced Kyrie. They then turned to walk beyond the metal fence, closing the fence, the stepping onto the sand-and-loam path that led off to Scrap Iron City in the distance. It was about a kilometer's walk--not much when one usually walked everywhere one went. More easy was the long path--an even and sturdy path while most of the field had small humps where grass grew with dandelion-flowers. That, and there were some occasional chunks of metal junk and old engine-sized machines half-buried in the dirt. Fast afternoon-time winds blew across the flat expanse of land, the sound of it accompanying them with their idle conversation along the way. Then again, the two were not as alone as they believed...

Something fluttered high above the scene--something that was a small red dumpy shaped thing against the blue sky. Or a person could try staring and squinting at it... On closer inspection, there was blurriness just above the blot-shaped thing. That blurriness was actually the rapid motion of little wings fluttering rapid-fire to keep it up in the air. At the center of its body was a very large eyeball that stared at the two young ladies who were heading off to that jumbled city-scape in the distance. They were steadily walking along one of several slightly sandy paths made by scavengers--paths that crossed this wide plain, paths made by scavengers who went to and from Scrap Iron City proper.

The eyeball strained to zoom in even closer. So staring, the eyeball was looking at Kyrie--zoomed in just close enough to see the petite girl, seeing her from bottom to top: The eye-focus kept her in sight from the soles of her sneakers, to the lengths of her bare legs, the blue of the shorts covering her hips, and the color of her little jacket over her back and shoulders, up to the top of her head of moonsilk-pale hair. Her hair, it was such long and pretty hair that fluttered carelessly in the breezes of the open plain. The petite girl's head occasionally turned in talking to the somewhat taller one.

Who was the other? It was a young lady was in tight pants and a similar jacket, with a head of silky dark hair the color of raven's wings—if raven-birds had not become extinct, that is. She also had a more blatantly sexy shape to her physique: tight clothing clinging to the body, with hair cut short to draw more attention to her body. But the eyeball only caught sight of the dark-haired one in the periphery. The dark-haired girl was not the center of the flying eyeball's focus.

No, its focus was on the one that looked smaller and younger. The flying eyeball itself had no feelings of judgment regarding beauty. Except, the one operating the flying eyeball did--the person operating the device with illegal hardware having such a love and obsession with the petite girl. And the eyeball kept staring as long as it dared without coming too close to the city. The flying eyeball much preferred to watch and see instead of being seen.

At the jumbled end of the sand-and-loam path was a section of cracked but solid-paved road that went between two concrete buildings, the buildings each three stories high--one of the small smokestacks puffing out steamy smoke from the top as glowing neon signs at street level made for points and places of florescent brightness--even in daylight. That "smoke" was actually cooking fumes from a pub—one of many eating and drinking places for social gatherings.

The rest of the road itself went left and right, going through this city-border neighborhood: a small neighborhood of storefront businesses that included shops, clubs, restaurants and—of course—trading posts. The trading posts being where parts scavengers could do some extra business before joining the rest of the sort that hung around this place. Why not, since there was plenty to do…

It was mid-afternoon, and there were plenty of people outside and in the store-front places themselves. Much of the crowd here worked at night deeper within Scrap Iron City, their "work" being the support-professions built around the insane-fast-dangerous sport of Motorball. The bustling noise of conversation was mixed with occasional sounds vehicular traffic and people everywhere--cyborgs and humans with varying degrees of metal-body replacement. There were also some sounds of tunes on the wind, musicians playing indoors. There was no sign that said, "Welcome to Tire-Wire Alley." Yet here it is.

Tire Wire Alley was about people. While others came here for visits and miscellaneous business, Tire Wire Alley was primarily about _Motorball_ people. Some came for business like selling salvaged parts or visit the clubs where people danced to aggressive rock or sat down to listen to the more sedate tones of more beautifully sedate melodies. Motorball players came here for the boisterous moral excesses available: drink some drinks, take in some loud music, go on dates with some pretty people, good times,_ good times!_ The coaches, they came here to talk up business and scout around for other coaches to talk with. Mechanics came to deal with parts and keep up with their trade. Some enthusiastic fans and amateurs came by from deeper within Scrap Iron City at times to look around--looking out of place as the wide-eyed looks on their faces labeled them _newbies. _

As the two girls stepped along the sidewalk (a somewhat uneven sidewalk), getting into the flow of walking traffic of the place, Sieben could hear the beats and faint singing melody of songs being sung across the street—music on the wind mixed with the bustle of activity. Sieben noticed that when they stepped by one club, Kyrie began nodding her head in time to the melody coming from out the open doors.

The pale-haired girl then looked sideways and up at Sieben--smiling. "We shall surely pass time in _that _establishment upon completion of today's transaction. It sounds new and interesting. A change from the usual. What say you?"

"Sure! Why not!" agreed Sieben. She then felt a delicate hand clasping her left one… Sieben clasped her fingers together. Now they were walking hand-in-hand. Going into the city was when the replicate-girl had to be doubly sure to act as a bodyguard. But moments and gestures like this was the pale-haired girl's way of saying, _It is okay. You are more to me than merely protection._

Mr. Okotonz's shop was one street over, across the street. The two girls turned to stand at the edge of the sidewalk in waiting for a break in the sudden series of vehicles driving by. A few trucks motored by before the two would cross the street. Some of those trucks were open in the back, the back-payload area full of big boisterous cyborgs who were somehow louder than the sound of vehicular traffic. They were Motorball players (with a _capital M_), here to have a good time before the dangerous excesses of Motorball tonight. _Eat, drink and be merry, for tonight we run the circuit, _was the attitude

When those few vehicles passed, the two girls made their way across. The shop itself was one among many shops and businesses that catered to the mechanics-and-Motorballers culture of Tire Wire Alley: a one-story storefront sort of place with bare bricks and barred-over glass windows to look inside. Over the door was a cut-out metal sign in the shape of a large, double-sided wrench with _Okotonz _written out in bright florescent letters that glowed an electric bright-blue above the bustle of sidewalk pedestrian traffic. The double-sided wrench shape of the sign meant this shop was also a trading post as well as a shop: the balanced-wrench sign recognizable even to people who couldn't read too well. Even if a person couldn't read some of the rare technical manuals sold in the trading post, the store was there and labeled.

Oh, but Mr. Okotonz's shop was more than just a typical scavenger's trading post! That was why Kyrie, and her father before her, had done business here. He was probably the only one in Tire Wire Alley who knew where and how to sell the premium and rare-quality items that Kyrie brought in. Sieben opened the door for Kyrie to go in.


	2. Chapter 2

_A Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 2—Welcome, Friends…

1.

Inside this shop was a place that looked like a mechanic's work-space, a pawn shop, a corner market, and a bookstore all combined into one place. Somehow this combination was made to look coherent and organized. A long metal counter divided this place in half. The counter was for when scavengers could lay out the goods they'd brought in: set the goods atop the metal counter for inspection and appraisal before selling. There was a heavy mechanical cash register at the far end. And on this side of the shop, there were two tables where people could sit down or talk business, some old and oil-stained mechanics' pamphlets stacked atop the tables. To Sieben, the counter was just above waist-height. It was up to Kyrie's shoulders.

The other half of this room, behind the counter, was the shopkeeper's area. Back there were painted metal lockers set alongside shelves of tools. Some of those tools were especially pricey and therefore locked out of sight. Left and right were shelves. And in the center was a high-stool, where the shopkeeper himself sat—a round-bellied man in work-shirt and floppy pants, the tee shirt covering a round fleshy belly while leaving bare his industrial-looking metal arms. While the rest of the big man may have taken on a big belly, those were the big industrial-metal arms of a former factory worker and Motorball mechanic. Right now one of those arms had been holding up a tattered but well-taped hardcover book—the fronts and backs replaced with plastic.

He put a cloth bookmark in the place before getting up to put it atop the counter. "Hey-hey! If it isn't Scrap Town's famous elf-girl! Have you come to lure me away to the land under the hills—to lull my life away in magical music and soul-softening fairy wine?"

Kyrie moved her arms to put hands on shorts-covered hips, the movement making her jacket flaring like wings. "Now Mr. Okotonz, there is little to no empirical evidence of such beings as _elves _or _fairies _ever having existed anywhere in history. Science has long ago trumped any such notion of a mythical thing denoted as 'magic'--instead replacing it with something altogether more practical and real. As for my physical appearance, my phenotype, it is more the result of happenstance than the result of anything mythical. _Mythical_ is the word…" She smiled. "Well, I give greetings to you as well."

"Come on, kiddo! A man can dream, can't he?" he asked. "But think about how you look. Only an elf-girl would have long, pale-silk hair like yours—hair the color of moonbeams. And only an elf-girl would have big pretty eyes like yours and the look of a child. How old are you… Twenty-something--still looking so sweet and innocently young? Face it. You look like you stepped out of a fairy tale to live in this crazy machine-city. All you need, girl, is for your ears to be a bit more pointy!"

Kyrie gave him such a _look! _Yes, Mr. Okotonz was in another one of those moods. "Mr. Okotonz, are we to trade discussions of mythology upon every meeting? Or is it that you wish to test the limits of my patience? Our friendship extends over generations..."

"Come on, kiddo. I'm just trying to get you to lighten up," he said. "Okay, okay. I'll leave you alone. I know full well that mythology is what it is, not real. But you're just so _cute _when you lose your composure. It adds some color to that cute face of yours. It seems that you have to learn that every other time you come here."

"_What!_" said Kyrie. She broke that hands-on-hips pose to put her hands to her face--which _was _feeling quite warm. Her cheeks must have an embarrassingly crimson undertone by now. And the knowledge of her blushing only made the blush increase its hold. Indeed, she _wasn't _too good with people. And no matter how long she had known Mr. Okotonz, he was _still _able to do this to her.

That metal-bodied man then turned his head to look at Sieben—gave her a quick look up and down as if he could see through her close-fitting outfit and inspect the condition of her body. "Hello to you too, young lady! I see the elf-girl's been keeping her promise and keeping your body in good repair." He put on a phony frown. "Well, she'd _better _if she wants to keep in business with me. 'Save your life,' indeed! How are you doing?"

"Just fine, Mr. Okotonz," responded Sieben. The replicate then put up a hand in greeting. Mr. Okotonz nodded to her before returning his attention to Kyrie. Talk was good, but business had to be taken care of first. While he watched Kyrie put her messenger bag to put up on the counter, Sieben's own eyes strayed to look on some of the tools on shelves behind the counter, behind where Mr. Okotonz was sitting.

Every so often she would look on a particular tool that made her vaguely uncomfortable. Since this shop dealt in tools for Motorball cyborgs, some of the equipment looked particularly heavy and brutal. Sieben couldn't help but imagine some of them being used on her own electromechanical body… Some of those tools, she had been told, were used for Motorball cyborgs to swap into temporary body-configurations for playing the sport. Sieben liked her body configuration just as it was: an electromechanical body that had a nice shape and was capable of speed and fighting. Besides, some Motorball players turned their bodies into things that looked more like vehicles than bodies. The metal-bodied girl really wasn't comfortable with the idea of strangers working on her body—one of the reasons why she couldn't be a Motorball player.

Some embarrassed color still on her cheeks, Kyrie put up five items atop the counter--five circular-cased items, each of them about the size of a makeup compact and with polished cases. They had wires and tubes trailing out the sides--or bottoms. Mr. Okotonz could just smile. Some of those parts presented were especially rare, all of them in such pristine condition. Then again, Kyrie could _make _parts—the girl being _that _smart. Just how smart she was, he would again be reminded.

Mr. Okotonz got up to reach underneath the counter to take out a heavy device which he set atop the counter--next to the items Kryie was presenting. The device had an industrial and heavy look to it, a thick square metal case with four rubber things on the bottom to keep it in place. The top of the case had four adjustable plastic dials with finger-holds--set beneath dials. Out the right side of the case was a foot-long thick cable--smaller wires of multiple colors coming out of the cable, with clips at the end. It looked something like a battery charger from long ago.

That man with metal arms then expertly clipped the red-, orange- and blue-colored wires to ends of one of the cyborg components that Kyrie set atop the table. He then _flicked _on the device by turning one of the knobs. A low _hummm _came from the boxy device as he flicked another knob--setting up a test sequence... _No, this can't be right. _

_"_Now wait a second!" exclaimed Mr. Okotonz. "Kyrie, electroshock rectifiers usually _waste _some of the electrical flow it's supposed to make steady. I've never seen one so efficient that it _adds _energy after correcting it. How'd you do it?"

Kyrie smiled. "Do you recall the Strong-Bond Theory manual you sold me the last time? Well, I found it to be _especially_ interesting reading. As I have read, electroshock rectifiers tend to lose some functionality over centuries as certain crystal parts within decay. The parts will still _work_--but become much less efficient." She shrugged. "I simply found a means of restoring the viability of the crystals within."

"What! Hmmph." Mr. Okotonz shook his head...before tilting it back and exploding with laughter! "_Aa-a-ah, ha-ha-ha-ha... _That sounds so crazy that it's amazing!" He looked down at the girl. "Well, there's no way around it. I've got to give you _triple_ the credits for just this one device. Just...amazing. Wait here."

He turned to get to an armored door to the right of the parts lockers against the wall. Door opened, he left this room for a while. Kyrie folded her hands in front of herself and looked around... Most of the goods on display in this shop were just for show. The best items--original texts from Zalem, rare tools--were only shown to those who had known Mr. Okotonz for years...

When Mr. Okotonz came back, he had a head-sized synthetic-cloth sack full of credit-chips. There was no doubt that those were credit chips, because only credit-chips made _that _sound when in bags--making jewel-like _clinkety _sounds. He set it atop the counter. "Now listen. This is about half of what I've got on hand. You might want to have your friend pick it up to count."

Sieben nodded. Her own metal arms were more slender and lithe-looking than Mr. Okotonz's metal ones, but her body was originally built with warfare-grade technology from Zalem. She easily took the sack of weighty credit-chips off the counter, brought it down and opened the top and presented the top of it to Kyrie.

Kyrie tucked some lengths of her hair away from her eyes before she sort of leaned over to look into the bag--her big eyes seeming to become even bigger, the vertical slit pupils widening. "Mr. Okotonz! This... This is far too much!" She looked up at him. "You said this was half of what you have on hand. But... If all of these credits are of the same denomination, it must be a month's worth of scavenger trades!"

"And the goods you're giving me are worth every chip--if not more," said Mr. Okotonz seriously. "Did you know that I've _always _got a backlog of Motorball mechanics wanting the 'premium' parts that only I seem to get? Nine times out of ten, they're _your _items that they want. Kyrie, if I didn't know your father and if we weren't friends, I wouldn't tell you this. But you didn't trade and sell with me, there would be a _lot _of other traders who'd want to do business with you."

The pale-haired girl shook her head. "And then they just might threaten my life to find out where I get them. Or they would pay to have black-market thugs to kidnap me. No, Mr. Okotonz, I prefer to remain in business with you. Except the extent of the money you have given me could put you _out _of business..."

"Not at all, sweetie-pie!" countered Mr. Okotonz. "I'm definitely going to make up for it with the sales of these amazing electroshock rectifiers. Besides, I _own _this place. And I own it thanks to trading with you and your father..."

_My father_, mused Kyrie. Sieben saw Kyrie's eyes take on that far-off and sad look. Her face suddenly brightened again. "Well then! Mr. Okotonz, if that completes this transaction, I shall leave you to enjoy the quality of the goods given. Sieben, let's go to that club! And we shall have to exchange bags, for I am not physically strong enough to bear the weight of that money..."

2.

As the machines and machine-people deeper within Scrap Iron City continued working along until quitting time. The churning smoke from smokestacks deeper within Scrap Iron City eventually gave way to a dissipating mist as more people were off-duty for the day. More people were walking along city sidewalks, going to see friends or maybe talk about spending some of their wages on a visit to the Motorball arena. That, and there were even more miscellaneous city people filling the restaurants and bars in Tire Wire Alley. Then came the long orange-red of sunset on the western horizon.

Sieben and Kyrie were already well-along that long path of sand and loam path that went across the wide plain on the way back to the converted building they called home. Sieben now had Kyrie's messenger bag--which was now noticeably sagging with the sack of credits earned from the day's trade. Very little of the money was actually spent at that one particular club that Kyrie wanted to visit. Kyrie did not drink alcoholic beverages as even a little of it was enough to turn her into a babbling idiot. She actually found that out from experience. And there was only so much money a person could spend on grape soda and flan served by the waiters and waitresses while listening to musicians perform.

They were nearly home, and Kyrie was still humming a particularly mournful and beautiful melody from one of the clubs--the sound of the wind acting as accompaniment. That song was so beautifully sad that it was as if the girl in trench-coat singing it was close to tears. The lyrics were especially good and deep as well--lyrics singing of being torn apart with nightmares...and with dreams. And way the orange-red sunset glowed on the western horizon would have fitted the song wonderfully. There was something about sunsets... Something high above fluttered away.

It wasn't until they were at the armored front door that Kyrie stopped her humming. Too bad, because Sieben liked the sound of the girl's voice when humming. "Hey, Kyrie..." began Sieben, breaking into a new vein of conversation. "Are you still thinking about doing some singing yourself?"

"_Hmm?_" voiced Kyrie as she completed dialing the combination to the front of the house. A few more button presses from her fine fingers, and the mechanical sounds of the front door unlocking _whirred_ open within the house. She tilted her head to the left. "Oh... Myself, it would be far too much of a distraction. Also true is how I lack knowledge of the craft--the intricacies of melody and interplay of accompaniment. I much prefer to toddle about with machinery." _Click-clack! _The door parted, and Kyrie pulled at it--the door counter-weighted and easy enough to pull open even for Kyrie. They went inside.

_Flick! _Kyrie turned on just half of the lights--making for there being just enough light to see by. Turning them all on at once, that would be too bright as compared to the sunset-dimness outside. It was enough to see the entire room and be sure that nothing had come into the house. There were bars over the windows all over the house. Also true was how all doors save the front door were locked. Except, it was better safe than sorry in making sure that nothing had come in.

Another flick of the light switch, and on came the other half of the lights. "_Erg-ach!_" came a sound. _What the Hell, _thought Sieben, looking around. "_Ach-ach-ach,_" came some more sounds...coming from the outside. Those sounds were only barely human. "_Elkric-whach-ach-ach...!_"

Even if Sieben had never heard that particular kind of gutteral gibberish before, she knew what was making it. _Mutants, _came the thought. _Mutants, _things that were either once human or not even born human were outside of this house. All of the miscellaneous chemicals that saturated places in the landscape of metal junk, along with places that were radioactive for hundreds of years--all of _that _did things to people before they were born. And in some rare cases, certain addictive drugs sold in the city made people _turn. _Unlike Kyrie, most all mutants were _that _way.

This house was generally safe from those things outside. The _mutants _may have somehow gotten over or through the metal fence around the house, but there was no way they could break through the barred windows with shatter-proofed annealed glass. They were still loud enough to be heard.

Sieben didn't like things that made Kyrie scared. And it was her job to keep Kyrie safe. "Unlock the door, then lock it behind me," said Sieben--her tone of voice darkened. "I'll deal with them." _And maybe there'll be a real mess when I'm done with them, too._

_Whack-k-k! _Something hit one of the barred windows. "_Elkric--satyagraha!_" cheered one of the mutants outside. _Whack _came again when something else was hurled at another window. Apparently, the things outside were intent on causing trouble. And Sieben would go out to cause them trouble in turn.

Kyrie grabbed one of Sieben's metal arms. "Sieben, they do not know what they do! And it is not as if any harm can come to me within here..." Kyrie said this, but her voice still quivered with fear. Sieben gently--but firmly--pulled her left arm away from Kyrie before facing the armored door. She then took off her jacket. The female replicate was ready to go back out the same way they had come in not even minutes earlier.

Behind Sieben, the heavy armored door clankedshut. It was getting close to dark out here--sunlight nearly down and past the horizon, the sky above a very faint blue-black. _Fw-w-wick! _Inside the house-building, Kyrie had turned on the security illumination; now a set of blazing lights glared on to cast the fenced-in front area of the house-building in glaring blue-white florescent illumination. They were nuclear-powered spotlights and were just as bright.

"_Satya-gra-ha-a-a!_" exclaimed one of the lumpy bodied, trenchcoat-clad figures as it staggered a step back and nearly lost a grip on the steel pipe in its left hand. The distorted figure stepped as if wanting to make a run for it, to run off into the darkened landscape around this too-bright place.

Sieben's robotic eyes easily adjusted to compensate for the intense illumination. And her electrically powered agility allowed her to _dash _at the one trenchcoat-wearing figure with the steel pipe. The metal-bodied girl was a wind-fast blur. _Fwap-p-p! _Her blur-fast dash of speed ended with her right leg extended in a kick--sending the lumpy figure in trenchcoat back and away, crashing to the hard dirt by the metal fence.

"_Oop? Orp-a-dollop,_" said another one of the mutants--a creature that seemed to be all arms and chest. This one didn't even bother with a trenchcoat. The mutant's blue-furred body just clad in a pair of pants, the upper body so gigantic with huge muscles that it stayed standing upright by using its long arms, pressing its gigantic hands to the ground. It then propelled itself forward by shoving against the ground to go flying head-first at Sieben--ready to knock down the girl.

Except Sieben was suddenly five meters to her left. There was a still-smoking double-streak in the dirt where her feet had scraped in stopping. And the double-streak in the ground was still smoking a bit when Sieben went at the gigantic-armed mutant. She _struck_, using the strength of her left leg in leaning into a right-fisted punch to the thing's chest. The creature gurgled a wet sound as something inside its chest was broken, then collapsed to the ground.

The third one was less easy to handle than the rest--a hapless and once-human creature with its skin hanging loose in its body and hanging in folds like a sheet. Its face had no nose as there was just a gigantic hole. This one chose to hang back. _Splort! _A greenish stream of something acidic swished out from the hole in its head--jetting through the air and nearly hitting Sieben full in the face. Yet some of it did hit her.

Sieben had dodged, but not without a few droplets sprinkling her right cheek. She blinked back the stinging pain of the liquid droplets--those droplets now dissolving streaks through her right cheek, down that side of her face, _her face_. Not only was it the immediate physical pain that hurt, but it was also the pain of disfigurement. For a moment, the metal-bodied girl could just stare into the red eyes of the once-human creature that had spit at her.

The undamaged side of her face grimacing into anger, Sieben acted. She flipped herself into a handstand--legs upward and towards the sky, her arms pressing the ground, metal hands biting into the dirt. Her fists compacted some of the dirt. She _hurled _the dirt as she flipped herself upright again: allowing her body to act as a two-handed electromechanical catapult.

It also resulted in fist-sized balls of compressed soil being sent bullet-fast through the air. These projectiles slammed into the face of the spitting mutant. Dark and glistening oily fluid began gushing from the holes in its own face. And in the bright glaring lights shining down from the upper story of the house-building, the contrast in color between the mutant's fish-gray chest and the dark fluid was like spilled ink on newspaper.

"_Och-och... Bur-r-rble..._" The thing began to gurgle as it staggered away towards the opening in the fence--to escape into the near-darkness of the surrounding landscape around this building. It would maybe die out there. It was better than having it die around here; Sieben hated cleaning up after dealing with mutants. And that was part of why she often used non-lethal blows.

Those other two mutants were also getting up. That one with the trenchcoat clutched its chest in standing up to stagger away as well. The blue-furred one didn't get to its feet as much as it got to its _hands. _Both of them recovered, they wanted to get _away _from here.

Sieben watched as that wayward bunch stepped out of this brightly lit area and into the darkness. If they didn't faint or die on their way, they would probably make their way around the surrounding fences to the hills of metal junk. Only when she was sure that no others were around did she put her right hand to the side of her face where the spitting mutant got her: metal fingers on tender synthetic flesh. She held her right hand to that side of her face as she made her way back to the armored front door of the house-building.


	3. Chapter 3

_A Circle of Fate and Pain _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 3—Introduction to Red Anger

1.

It was a while before Kyrie could calm herself enough to settle down for tonight's rest. A nice hot bath in her own bathroom helped somewhat, just her alone and relaxation in a polished titanium tub of water large enough to be a wading pool. But there was still a feeling of agitation that could not be properly alleviated. That feeling was a small but troubling dot of thought in her mind—like a dot of annoyance that would not leave her alone. She laid back in the big circular tub of steamy water, the hot water relaxing muscles and mind…

But it did not relax all of her mind. Trouble would just not leave her alone. The annoyance surpassed her tolerance. Kyrie could _not _relax. So the girl quickly climbed out of the tub, pulled the lever to drain the water and dried herself off before dressing in a nightgown before putting on cloth slippers to cross the tiled bathroom floor in heading for the attached bedroom—her bedroom. Bath water drained as she went.

There in her bedroom, her head of hair still slightly damp, she dressed herself in ankle-length nightgown--belted at the waist to keep it from becoming too floppy. The entire third floor of this converted border-land building was what she truly called home--her bedroom and attached room for bathing the core of home. Her bedroom was large, with a bed that was opposite the window. A sofa, three bookshelves and a desk against the right-side wall. Since there was only night-lights on at four corners of the room, most of the place would seem to be in darkness. Even with low red light, Kyrie's unusual eyes allowed her to see well enough. She crossed the large bedroom to climb into the big bed--pulling the bed-covers over herself. Why did people have to hurt and kill, to be hurt and killed?

The girl _knew_ that Sieben was trying her best to keep this building safe, maybe trying _too _hard. After all, being a _bodyguard _was the first and official arrangement between themselves. Part of that job meant dealing with anyone or anything threatening this home—even if the troublemakers were mutants. But Kyrie insisted that Sieben not be a killer in keeping this place safeWho knows, maybe Sieben would mistake Kyrie's returning father for a mutant? Or her father may have actually _become _a mutant after wandering all of that contaminated and junk-covered landscape of the Scrapyard…

As close as it was to the Scrapyard, as dangerous as it could be sometimes out in the open land between the Scrapyard and Scrap-Iron City, this was home. Everything was going to be fine. That was especially true since Kyrie had activated the lock-down mechanisms for tonight: all armored doors mechanically locked shut, blast-proof shutters over the windows, infrared cameras and sensors monitoring everything within the perimeter. Most nights were not trouble-ridden anyway. As Kyrie went off to sleep after the day's business now, she thought of Sieben being so deadly and _violent…_

Kyrie had replaced Sieben's face earlier tonight. She was still dressed in the jeans-shorts and tee-shirt outfit worn to Tire Wire Alley, her long pale-silk hair tied back with an elastic band. Her fingers flexed and grasped as she followed the procedure. She was still _very angry_ at Sieben for using too much brute force in getting the mutants in going away. That was because Sieben broke one of the _biggest_ and _most important_ rules regarding mutants! Still, Kyrie had made sure that her friend and bodyguard was properly repaired.

_You must not kill, Sieben! You know full well that not all mutants are the mindless and violent creatures everyone in the city says they are. _Kyrie said that while applying a chemically specific gel that would soften the edges of Kyrie's damaged face. _I count myself among them, among mutants. Deterrence is why you are my bodyguard. Deterrence does not mean murder. And from what I observed by way of remote camera, I saw what could very well have been murder..._

When the gel set, Kyrie was able to use a thin steel blade to cut all along the perimeters of Sieben's damaged face. Then, by pressing in certain places, Kyrie was able to disconnect the subcutaneous connections that connected the synthetic skin of Sieben's face to the front of her head. It was like pulling away a thick mask.

The girl held the damaged, rubbery face in both hands. _Hmmph, _the acid had managed to eat almost all the way through this face—a face that Kyrie now held in her hands.

Just maybe the girl should have left Sieben lying on the table right then and there, leaving the replicate without a face. But no, the pale-haired girl could not do that—though she wanted to do so. So Kyrie turned away, carried away the damaged face over to a specially rebuilt machine designed to recycle raw materials--the machine itself recycled and rebuilt from the wastes of the Scrapyard region. Next to the machine was a storage case where spare faces and other accessorizing spare parts were kept for Sieben. Kyrie took out one such replacement item.

Meanwhile, back at the table, the currently faceless Sieben looked exactly like what she was: a _robot_, a robotic replicate with an electromechanical body in the shape of a young woman. It was a metal face and head on top of an articulated neck and female-shaped robotic body. Seiben still had the rest of her scalp to hold her shoulder-length dark hair to her head, and her dark eyes still stared out from a metal skull-visage.

Sieben did not look like _Sieben. _Kyrie hesitated a moment before beginning to attach this replacement part to the _thing _on the repair table—who simply stared. There was no use talking to a _thing._

Then the large-eyed girl began the reattachment procedure for the new face. After lining up the top of the forehead with the chin, then pulling the sides to align the cheeks, Kyrie pressed the face to the front of the replicate's skull. She then pushed and held the temples and chin as the catalytic adhesive sealed the cut edges of the face. Induction nodes at the front of the metal skull connected to points beneath the skin. In about a minute, Sieben's new face became part of her.

It was as if Sieben's face wasn't damaged at all. While the replicate-girl sat up on the work-table, blinking and adjusting to a new face, Kyrie left the room. _Thanks, Kyrie. I'm sorry, _said Sieben when her friend left--her voice sounding small and sad among the humming of the machinery. Kyrie just barely caught the words as she went through the hall to go upstairs--into the more habitable parts of the house-building. Sieben sounded close to crying. But Kyrie didn't care if the replicate _did _cry. Kyrie was feeling angry. And it was good that the replicate hurt a little inside for fatally wounding—maybe _killing—_amutant. Some mutants did not know any better and ought not be murdered for what they do. That was one of Kyrie's rules.

It was a while since Kyrie had since gone off to bed… Sieben got up off of the work-table and set her bare metal feet to the square-tiled floor. She put on her footwear to keep from slipping on the hard-tiled floor. Metal feet and hard-tiled floors are not the easiest of combinations to walk with. Now Sieben could walk around. About her face…

The rolling tray in the far-right corner had a mirror on it. She picked it up, metal fingers clasping the plastic edges of the frame, held it and tilted the thing as so she could see her replacement-face. Of course Kyrie had done a typically wonderful job in repairing the damage. This was the second time she had to have a new face. And new faces always felt a little funny, a little _rubbery--_as if she was wearing a flexible mask.

Yes, it was _her_ face in the reflection. It was the same milk-complexion look on her round sort of face, with her dark eyes open and staring, along with her high-boned cheeks flanking her slightly pouty lips, a pert sort of nose. It was all framed with straight dark hair that framed her face to barely touch her shoulders. Her original face used to have a number _7 _etched into the artificial skin of the forehead, along with two chrome streaks embedded in her cheeks. Her body repaired after destruction and her face replaced twice, Sieben was not her original self.

Sieben knew full well that she was not even an original herself. She was made a copy of someone else--one of multiple robotic copies. The number _7 _was her name: _Sieben_, when pronounced. There also once were over ten other people who looked a lot like her--ten other _replicates. _They were all made with the same replication process, all had numbers on their heads to tell them apart. Then one of their number went insane and began destroying all the other replicates with the idea of becoming the "original"--not stopping until everyone else was destroyed. That other replicate was a killing machine--a real monster with a gigantic alloyed screw in place of an eye and a wild-haired look. The monster was still roaming Scrap Iron City, looking for all replicates.

_Don't be silly, _came the thought. _I'm safe. _In fact, Sieben was more than safe. She was just recently repaired! So... Sieben opened her mouth wide-open as far as possible. _Ah... _Then she tried a _pout_, lips out and cheeks out. The cheeks felt just a little bit tight, but that's fine. A smile, and her reflection smiled back at her--dark eyes twinkly with glee. Okay, everything was as it was supposed to be--even if her cheeks felt a little bit tight.

Except, was _Kyrie _okay? Oh boy, _that _could be a problem. Sieben put the mirror back on the rolling cart and sat down cross-legged on the floor to think about this. Kyrie was really angry about what happened outside--not pissed enough to leave Sieben with a messed-up face, but still not happy at all. But Sieben had to do _something _about those mutants.

Those mutants were a really nasty group. There was the one with the acid-spitting big mouth, really quick. And there was that other one with the _huge _arms. Those two together could have broken into this house-building eventually and caused trouble. The one spitting acid could probably spit holes in this house-building's glass while the other one could use its big arms to try and break the bars over the window. Sieben had seen some really freaky mutations before, but those were some of the _freakiest. _She just _had _to stop them from being trouble to the house.

Kyrie was still angry at her. As Sieben sat in this corner of the work-room, sitting with machines and machine-tools--the low humming sound of the house-building's generator in the basement--she imagined Kyrie with that slightly contemptuous downturn of lips. It was that slight pout of hers that said, _You disappoint me greatly_. Kyrie may have the physical appearance of a child, but her attitude was sometimes like someone's mother.

_I'm trying my best, _thought Sieben to herself. _I'm really, really trying! _Why couldn't Kyrie understand that? Now the pout on Sieben's face was for real, not a test-pout in the mirror. Just because Kyrie was a bit mutant herself shouldn't mean that she should _sympathize _with those monstersand stuff! _Monsters, _that was what those other mutants were. In fact, Kyrie ought not even consider herself a mutant; she was too pretty and too smart to be something like that. Maybe she'd tell Kyrie that in the morning.

Thinking that, Sieben uncrossed her legs, then bent her knees before snapping to her feet. She then made her way for the open doorway out of this work-room. A _click _of the light-switch, and the work-room was shut into near-darkness: there still being the low red glow of a night-light built into the far-right wall, along with green pinpoints of little lights on the various machines. It was time for Sieben herself to shut down for the night. It was not that the replicate-girl _needed _sleep, but the hexagonal brain-chip in her head operated in a way similar to that of a human brain. Sleeping made her feel better.

2.

_Flying along, little wings…_ fluttered above a jagged landscape faintly illuminated with moonlight. In contrast to the pale glow were round red lights attached to the gigantic machinery. Those construction machines were the size of buildings and skyscrapers, having large scooping arms looking as if they were detached from space-faring giant robots and attached to oversized trucks. Now those gigantic machines were used to move mountains of metal junk. The mountains were moved to prevent them from piling up and avalanching too much.

If one did not believe that, then there was another truth: The gigantic machines were actually in place to keep the junk from piling too high and maybe reaching too close to the floating city from which they were dropped. There were lights on those machines because, long ago, the lights were needed to keep flying machines from crashing into them at night. Even with flying machines long-gone for hundreds of years, the immense machines still had those lights attached--though now the machines themselves were used to adjust and move the mountains of junk to spread it out--shifting this landscape of junk. Then came the fog…

It was a sinister, noxious fog born of the chemicals within certain kinds of junk. Ancient junked cars, long-lost flying machines, generators, there was no telling what exactly was in that fog. It hissed up and out from various places. Before long, the toxic chemical fog was everywhere and obscuring the moonlight. Those distant red lights on the mountain-moving machines became glowing spots. It was harder to keep those little wings fluttering fast enough now…

This view moved upwards. From higher up, there were shapes among the toxic mists. Some of the shapes among the mists began to move. Those moving shapes loped among the valleys between the hills and mountains of junk. And how they looked could have been a trick of the light. Some of them seemed to twist as they walked. Others seemed to move along on more than one set of legs. Extra humps seemed to go where there should have been just the head. Except... Those were no tricks of the light. Those shapes were alive.

Some of the more unpleasant mutants were on the prowl for food this night: many of them with skin too raw with deformations and sores to be exposed to sunlight. They looked towards one building in particular as Sieben saw herself coming out through the armored front door. The view moved in as three malformed shapes made their way for the house-building. They usually stuck to eating rats and the occasional stray dog--the rawmeat more…_rich and satisfying than anything cooked. And if a fleshie human so happened to come by, they would be next._

…

There was a glare of light. "Don't eat them!"cried the replicate-girl, sitting up in bed. _What... What? _Sieben looked around--seeing sunlight streaming through her bedroom window. What it was, it _was _just a nightmare. It _had _to have been a nightmare. How _else _could she see _herself _coming out of this place and outside to see herself getting ready to fight? It really was like watching herself.

Like all nightmares and dreams, that strangeness made sense while she was there. It was like a trace-transmission from one of those flying spy-drones from the Floating City of Zalem. The people up in that floating city tried to be discreet abut deploying those spying things. But how discreet could a flying furry creature with one big eyeball be? And they were especially not too careful about the radio frequencies used to communicate with those things. That in mind, Sieben sighed and climbed off of the bed.

She then reached for the robe on a chair next to this bed and put it on over her bare body. Not that there was anything to look at besides shaped and segmented metal, but it was still her body--even if it was not of flesh. She preferred to cover herself rather than walk around without clothes. People wear clothes. Machines do not. To feel more like a real person, she wore clothes. Besides the robe, there were simple rubber-soled shoes for her articulate gray feet to keep her from scratching the tiles or slipping. So dressed, Sieben made her way out of her bedroom to go downstairs and towards the kitchen. Kyrie ought to be up within the hour or so since it was daylight.

Sieben walked down the carpeted concrete stairwell to the first floor. This brought her down to the living-room area of this house-building--with morning light coming in through the barred windows high up on the living room walls. She then turned around to begin stepping towards the kitchen-room...where Kyrie sitting over in there at the table--her back to the living room.

Even from across the living room and looking into the kitchen, without seeing Kyrie's face, Sieben could see that something was wrong. Kyrie was sitting somewhat leaned over, her head down. Cascading down her nightgown-covered back, her hair was in disarray. The girl must not have brushed it before coming downstairs. And she wasn't eating. She was just sort of sitting there...

Well, there was no use in just standing here and staring. The way to find out what was the matter with her friend was to walk up and ask. So Sieben crossed the carpet-covered expanse of the living room. There was just barely the slight clinking of her electromechanical body's hip-joints, the sound muffled by the long robe she had on. Over there, Kyrie looked up for a moment before lowering her head again; she knew that it was Sieben.

Stepping off of the living room carpet brought her into the kitchen proper as Kyrie still sat there. The replicate-girl in robe then walked around to the right side of the table and reached to get the other chair. This was as so she could sit right next to Kyrie--who still had her head down, her hair curtaining her face to hide her expression--hair brushing the top of the table.

"Kyrie...? Like, are you feeling sick?" asked the replicate-girl. She leaned forward and turned her head, trying to look beyond that hair to see Kyrie's face. "_Oh-h-h..._ Is your head bothering you again? I'll go get the headache-pills and some water..." _Snif-f-f-f!_

Just thenwith that loud sniffing sound, Sieben knew that it wasn't a headache. The pain was emotional, not physical. Sieben just now noticed the pool of wetness atop the polished surface of the kitchen table that was below where Kyrie had her head down: a pool of tears. There was the ever-so-slight sound of Kyrie trying to sob very quietly--thin shoulders quivering in nightgown, head shuddering. Those were a lot of tears... How long was Kyrie sitting here and crying? It must have been an hour.

Sieben quickly got up to face the kitchen sink--drinking-glasses in the cabinet It took just a few seconds to turn on the tap and get some water. She took less time than that to get back to the kitchen table to set the glass of water atop it and sit closer to Kyrie. "Listen... Like, whatever's wrong, you've gotta tell me. We can try and fix whatever's wrong."

Kyrie gave another sob and gently shook her head. There was another loud _sniff _before she tried using words, her voice sounding raw and troubled. "It... It is myself...at fault. The... The blame I put on you, I should...blame myself. For...it is you who seek to maintain my safety. My fault, _for…!_" At this point, the girl then leaned over until her face was nearly on the table. It looked as if she was going to try and smother herself in her own tears--until she felt a metal arm reaching across her back and a familiar metal hand gently clasping her left arm.

Sieben's face was soon close to her own--a face having been replaced just last night. "_Sh-h-h-h_... _It's okay,_" she whispered, her machine-warm breath fluttering lengths of Kyrie's hair and puffing her face. And this close, Sieben's gentle breath smelled vaguely of plastic: familiar breath, a familiar voice.

"I still understand about what you feel," she continued, "about mutants and stuff_. Listen... _I know that I didn't kill them. They walked right on out of the front yard. If they were gonna die, they wouldn't have been able to walk away, right? Besides... Out there, they must get into a _lot _of trouble. They're okay. They just won't want to come backcause that's what I do. I made it so they wouldn't _ever _wanna come back here and cause trouble. There's an old Zalem word for what I've done: deterrence. You know what it means, right?"

Kyrie nodded. There was truth in Sieben's words. The idea that Sieben could have killed those mutants, that was just an over-reaction. If the replicate wanted to _kill _those mutants, it was well within her capabilities of doing so. Killing actually was why Sieben had been made by Zalem: a replicate-girl originally designed to hunt and kill someone in particular. Except, the replication process that went into making Sieben's bio-chip brain made her a lot less aggressive than the other replicates. It could have been why that other replicate had nearly destroyed Sieben.

Sieben didn't kill any of the mutants. That mutant must have just been badly hurt. Sieben would not _kill. _That in mind, Kyrie tilted her head up and reached up to tuck some lengths of her hair behind an ear to reveal her face--to look into those big dark eyes that Sieben's has. The replicate-girl may have been a robot to the core of her being, but she was as real a person as Kyrie could want.


	4. Chapter 4

-1_A Circle of Fate and Pain _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 4—Revelation of The Machinists

1.

Later that morning, the two females dressed themselves in city-style clothing. This was them again dressing up instead of just putting on what they usually wore around the house-building—when it was just themselves. Kyrie went with shorts and white top with jacket worn over, and put on more flexible footwear. Sieben went with a pair of black leggings and gray tank-top, putting on a jacket over the midriff-baring outfit. Flat-heeled shoes went onto her feet. Sieben had her little purse, and Kyrie went with her beige messenger bag.

Going to the city two days in a row… It felt a bit unusual. But Kyrie really wanted to take Sieben to the city for the sake of getting her something special. The girl said she wanted to buy Sieben some things thought about for quite some time. And it was this time, this trip, that Kyrie was going to buy it.

They later left the house-building to walk that sand-and-loam path over to that city across the way. Even if the path was somewhat long by some walking measures, the walk itself was enjoyable because the two had each other for company. The two were walking hand-in-hand along that long sandy path to the city. They went this way as that wind continued _how-w-wling _across the flat hard plain. This was known because the flying drone with the eyeball was watching them.

Upon stepping between those two big buildings and entering the border neighborhood of Tire-Wire Alley, Kyrie suddenly turned to grab Sieben's left hand--and began tugging impatiently. "Hurry _o-o-on, _Sieben!" The girl leaned backwards to put her weight into the tugging--not that she had much weight at all, though. "The surprise is _th-i-i-is _way!"

"Okay, okay! Like, I'm hurrying!" voiced Sieben, metal arm still being pulled by Kyrie. She could not also help but smiling at this: Kyrie's enthusiasm was catching. When those big eyes of Kyrie's became all sparkly and pretty with happiness and when those cheeks of hers flexed into a smile, a person could not help but to feel warm inside. "So like, are you gonna tell me what it is yet or what?"

Kyrie stopped her tugging just long enough to say, "You shall see upon arrival at the location. And _then_ it shall be known. The worth of a surprise is diminished upon losing its secrecy. No _do _come along! My enthusiasm cannot be easily contained!" And then the girl resumed tugging.

"Yeah, same here," said Sieben. She then let herself be led by the hand towards one particular end of Tire-Wire Alley, going along this sidewalk. Kyrie walked in a leaned-forward sort of way, striding, with her left arm reached back and holding hands with Sieben—much as a young child would pull along a favorite oversized toy. They were now moving slightly faster than the rest of the crowd, walking past some mechanic and Motorball-looking people, big cyborgs and full-flesh people.

"The destination is near the end of this block!" cheered Kyrie, her long pale hair fluttering behind her as she continued pulling Sieben along like a big toy. "You shall also know the joy of what shall be! Oh, I cannot _wait!_"

Then came..._the sound of something gigantic. It was a sound as big as the day, quaking the air, making everyone go numb in the loudness. What the Hell...? That growl was like an accursed sound from a long-extinct nuclear-powered wrecking machine. It was enough to make everybody around here stop and look. _

_When..._the roaring stopped, everyone along the sidewalks and outdoors went quiet. Was it a ground-quake? Did a Factory-building blow up or have an accident? People looked around for the results of damage, looking for fallen buildings or smoke... Or something. There was instead a loud growl of anger that sounded somewhat like the _roar. _"_Why are you still functional!_"

Sieben looked across the street. Over there was someone--or _something_. It was a crazy haired figure dressed in a ridge-ribbed bodysuit of synthetic leather. The pants-legs of the ridged bodysuit were tucked into gigantic armored metal boots that went up to the knees. Since the strange body-suit was sleeveless, it left bare a gigantic pair of huge robotic arms. The figure's face had a pasty and damaged synthetic face that was scored and scarred with nicks and cuts in too many places. Butch-styled wild black hair spiked out in all directions from the scalp. And at the center of the figure's forehead was the numeral _6--_pronounced _Sechs. _

Both arcs of Sieben's eyebrows went up as the thing identified as _Sechs _began to run in this direction. And by running, the _Sechs _replicate looked even more brutal. _Clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp... _Big armored boots stomped out a heavy beat as the wild-haired creature came running here with a loping stride more worthy of a beast than anything vaguely human--hunched over and with big robot-arms arms swinging. Because _Sechs _was striding down the middle of the street, vehicles had to _s-w-w-werve _and veer around it. _Wha-a-mp! _Two vehicles smacked right into each other… But _Sechs _only kept on moving.

And it _scr-a-a-aped _to a stop, armored boots digging furrows in the street. Being up close only made for the Sechs replicate looking even more brutally grotesque. The scuff-marks on the face, the twisted and mask-like sneering expression on it, it was a feral head atop a blocky body with arms that looked far too big. This nightmare-twisted replicate stood five long strides' length away from Sieben.

A replicate... Sieben was _also_ a replicate, and at least _some _similarities were there. Sieben was actually the same height as the robotic creature, though Sieben now stood with back straight. They also had similar facial features if one ignored all the cuts and scrapes in Sechs' face--same lips, same eye-color. Both had dark hair...

Yet they were two contrasting flavors of the same model. As wonderfully beautiful and polite as Sieben looked, Sechs was a contrastingly brutal in appearance. The shape of Sieben's robotic body was more slender and slightly curvaceous, dressed in stylish clothing, and her new face was framed with silky dark hair radiating from the scalp. Sieben had a look of beauty and grace...

Sechs had the look of mighty strength and overpowering brutality, a strong-and-aggressive fighting machine. And Sechs' face had a look of physical combat experience, framed with that spiky dark hair. One of the huge arms cape up, a cable-thick robot-finger extending to point at Sieben.

"_A-a-ach!_" snarled the Sechs replicate. "You look weak and inferior! Even _without _the proper numeral carved into your forehead, _I know of you! _You are _Sieben, _and trying to replace your face cannot hide your inferiority to _me._"

Oh yeah, something was _really _happening here. And that something looks as if it is turning into a fight! The day was still young. So this should prove to be at least a little entertaining until time to get to the Motorball coliseums tonight. _Fight-fight-fight-fight-fight...!_

Oh yeah, this had all the makings of fine sidewalk drama. At the center of this sidewalk crowd were the three people involved: a very pretty cyborg-girl, well-dressed and with nice-looking dark hair around a very pleasant face. With her was a shorter and more delicate fleshie-girl in a cute outfit of shorts and shirt with jacket worn over, with pretty hair flowing from her scalp, and she had the biggest eyes they'd ever seen. Facing the pretty cyborg-girl and her little friend was a big-armed robot with the number _6 _mysteriously carved into the skin of its forehead. People would normally _pay _to see this sort of thing.

"Go away!" yelled the cute young girl with big eyes, standing next to the pretty replicate. "I know of you as well! A terrible thing of dark intent, you want to destroy people! There are _laws _in Scrap Iron City. I shall call out for a Net-man and have a bounty placed on your head if you wish to hurt my Sieben again."

"_Har-har-har-har-har-har...!_" snarfled Sechs. "_Your _Sieben? Is _that _how things are between you two? Hmmph... Think again, little girl! The Netmen won't give a damn. Why? It is because 'your' Sieben _is a replicate! _She does not have an actual brain. And she does not have a real body." Sechs clenched mighty metal fists at the ends of long and powerful robotic arms. "There is no law to stop what I shall do."

"That interpretation of laws is correct," came a newcomer to this sidewalk drama, a tinny sort of voice coming from Kyrie's left. It was exactly what Kyrie would had called for: a Netman. The Netman was a robotic being, a big chubby rubber face on a cylindrical metal body--a keyboard on its chest, with the robot-body mounted on a platform with four motorized feet. This Netman explained the judgment. Saying, "The criteria for imposing a bounty is not met in this instance. Officially speaking, neither of the parties involved have human brains. The two parties are therefore at liberty to destroy each other as they see fit."

Kyrie turned to her left, facing the Net-man—her right hand still holding hands with Sieben. "How can you say that?" she asked, looking up at the Netman's rubbery face. "There _must _be a law to keep these two from fighting. Sechs and Seiben were originally made at the behest of Zalem. They were made with Factory technology. If one destroys the other, is that not destruction of Factory property?"

"You ask if they are Factory property. Officially speaking, the answer to that is _no-o-o comment!_" said the chubby faced robot. Similarly, a big hand appeared on a screen on its chest--the hand-gesture for _stop_. And for the sake of those who could read, the screen then flashed _No comment_ appeared in multiple languages.

"Okay, Sechs..." said Sieben. She gently slipped her left hand out of Kyrie's hold and facing Sechs on the street, gently pushing Kyrie away. The replicate-girl then faced Sechs. "It's just between _you _and _me. _If you wanna fight me, then let's go. I'm not hiding from you for the rest of my life!"

"No Sieben!" wailed Kyrie, "I command you to_ not fight Sechs!_" She leapt forward to hug Sieben tightly around the waist--feeling the slender alloy hardness of Sieben's electromechanical body beneath jacket. "_Do not fight,_" she said, her right cheek pressed to Sieben's abdomen.

_I'm sorry, _thought SiebenShe gently patted Kyrie twice on the head—but looked over her to make eye-contact with some people in the crowd nearby. A nod from Sieben, and three people walked over here to pull Kyrie away to safety. This was going to be a brutal fight between two combatants with electromechanical strength, and such a delicate girl as Kyrie could be easily injured in such a confrontation--if not killed.

Kyrie was at first surprised by hands grabbing her, hands wrapping around slim arms and grabbing her wrists in pulling her away from her friend. Her shoes skidded along the sidewalk. "What is this? _Unhand me, meddlers!_" she shrieked. "_Aid me, Sieben! Protect me!_"

"Like, I'm going do that right now," said Sieben. Talking to the nightmarish replicate, she said, "Now Sechs, let's finish this." Then she took up a basic sort of fighting stance: standing sideways, legs apart, right arm bent to protect the midriff, both fists clenched. Her right arm was positioned like a shield. "Whatever way this ends up, it'll be over for good. No hiding, no running for the rest of my life!"

_"_You _simpleton!_" jeered the other replicate, the one that looked like a nightmare-twisted version of Sieben. "Look at that stance! You must have the silly idea that you could actually succeed in deflecting damage from _any _of my attacks! I could just slap your prissy self and put you down." This was when Sechs took into a sort of fighting stance: the upper body leaning forward, the construction machine-style arms at the sides. So standing, it was the look of a predator preparing to attack prey. Two steps, and Sech's gigantic-robotic left arm blurred for a second--ripping the air and making an arc...

Sieben could not react in time. _Thwa-a-ack! _The big robot-armed blow did not knock off her head, but it almost did—making her head go angled to a side and angling her neck. _"Ahh,_" whimpered Sieben, staggering backwards.

She should have _tried _to duck that blow. Except she just wasn't fast enough to completely avoid being hit. The blow had instead sharply glanced off the side of her head at an angle. It still made for an awful sideward jerking of her neck.

Even with her damaged neck hurting, Sieben snapped back into her fighting stance. As Sechs repositioned arms to attack again, Sieben ducked to _kick. _Her strike managed to hit Sech's right ankle. Something had _cracked_. Radiating lines of damage showed in metal.

That _something_ was an armored shin-guard. Yes, the weak and inferior replicate had actually _split armor_ _with a kick! _Sechs couldn't believe it for a second. Then came _anger_. Both of Sech's machine-arms went up in a two-fisted hammer-blow. Those gigantic fists together looked like an articulated wrecking ball prepared to _smash _Sieben.

Now the fists were coming slamming down through the air... _Shwa-m-m-m! _Chunks of cracked street exploded out from the impact. Sech's fists had actually blasted through the foot-deep asphalt of the street and into the layer of packed and dry dirt. Smoke and dust cleared. The result was a crater the size of two heads put together, Sech's fists still in it. It was the obliteration of the street where Sieben was just standing two-point three seconds before.

Except Sieben had already jumped out of the way and then did a tumbling tuck-and-roll maneuver--leaping left and curling herself into a ball to tumble along the street. When she stopped her maneuver, she was kneeling with her right hand braced to the ground--and she was feeling the pain-signals in her neck that indicated damage. But her head was still okay: It was hard to damage a replicate's bio-chip brain as it was so deep within a human-sized head reinforced with metal skull. Sieben put her left hand to the back of her neck when a twinge of pain-signals burned there... It was beginning to hurt--_a lot. _

The Sechs replicate _how-w-w-w-wled_ like the monster it was. There was a _clunking _sound as that monster-replicate then pulled both fists out of the crater. "Why cannot you _stand still! _Crushing you is like trying to smash a lowly gnat with a jackhammer! Be still, my pretty, and the pain shall end quickly. One excellent blow will be all. I promise you that..."

"_N-no!_" yelled Sieben, feeling her legs becoming a little unsteady as she resumed her fighting stance--which was a bit hard to do now. Though feeling unsteady on her legs, her legs were not the problem. It was her neck, which was damaged. The connections from head to body were damaged. Still... "_I-I'm_ not gonna give up. You just want to _kill people!_"

"That is _wrong_," replied the walking nightmare in stepping over here. "I do not destroy people. _You _are not 'people.' _You _are not a person. _You_ are just an inferior robotic replicate-version of the original." Sechs was now coming closer...and stopped. "I exist to smash weak and inferior replicates like you until I reach the original. It is because _I _deserve to be the original. This is how!"

_Whack-k! _Like before, Seiben launched a kicking attack, her right leg blurring. Except this time the kicking attack had arced straight up to hit at Sechs' upper body. Not that a person could see the actual kick, because Sieben's attack was so fast and crisp that it seemed as if her right leg seemed to temporarily disappear—to reappear straight up, with heel facing the sky.

Sechs staggered backwards as sparks flared from the resulting damage, a piece of machinery now missing from the gigantic left arm. It looked serious, and the arm twitched. But _how? _"You inferior thing! You should not be able to damage _me!_"

"_Shut up!_" screamed Seiben, lowering her right leg. As Sechs' big left arm twitched again, Sieben's left leg blurred into yet another machine-fast kick. Except this _kick_ was straight out instead of blur-arcing upwards. The crowd _wooed _as Sechs went airborne and backwards, hurtling away to go crash-landing more than twenty long strides away.

But then that replicate used its gigantic metal arms to stand up again, a toothy smile with sharp ceramic teeth. Sechs was grinning, even though there was a chunk missing out of the left arm and with the back of the ridged suit with pieces of street in it. "You have good kicks," said the nightmare. "But I can see how your body is shaking. Your neck is damaged, and a lot of data transmission circuitry within your spine must be shorted out by now. Can you still dodge?" Then Sechs's undamaged arm blurred, catapulted a chunk of the street.

_Shlink! _"_Ah!_" Sieben couldn't dodge. That fist-sized chunk of street had been thrown faster than the speed of an old-style projectile; it_ hit_ her on the left thigh. Some electromechanical workings had been jarred... There was a blast of sparks flaring through the thin material of the leggings on that side.

Her left leg stopped working, forcing her to go to a kneeling position. Combined with the damage pain-signals in her neck, it was too much. More pain signals flared up through the cabled circuitry in her neck and filled her computer mind. Her left leg was beginning to smoke a little. And the _back of her neck hurt so much...! _As pain signals continued flaring, her vision...was beginning to turn a red warning-color

A guy in the crowd spoke up. "Hey Net-man! Did you see that? Aren't projectiles against the law? No guns allowed! And that was just like a gun!"

"That is incorrect for three reasons. One reason, the attack was not illegal as it was not delivered by way of a firearms," countered the chubby faced Netman. "A second reason, Sechs is classified as an agent of Zalem and is therefore allowed to use any means necessary towards the final goal. A third reason, neither party within the bounds of this conflict possesses a human brain."

"Huh? Whaddaya mean, talking about brains! And who cares about brains! It's still no fair! Still, why can't we use guns?" countered the loud man. The crowd hissed for him to _shut up. _"Okay, okay! But it's still not fair!"

Sechs had _again _walked back to where Sieben was. Except this time, there was no more risk of being _kicked _away. Sieben struggled to stand, fell back to a kneeling position. Her body just wasn't working right. Worst of all, her left leg was still damaged to the point where standing was not possible.

"_Har-har-har!_ That is the way you should be, weakling--on your knees before me!" declared Sechs before placing a robotic hand atop Sieben's head. The robotic hand was large enough to completely cover the top of Sieben's head. "This is the end of you!" The grip tightened. Sechs smiled... A sharp big-arm movement to the left, and there was an awful sound of wrenched metal and snapped connections as a gush of sparks flared outward. The second _yank _did the job--a final horrible sound.

Sieben's headless body collapsed to lie down on the street. Sparks flared outward from the jagged metal neck-stump as the body twitched. There was another gush of sparks before the body went still. Sieben's head was in Sech's gigantic left hand and shutting down as there was no power supply...

Even this was not enough to satisfy the electromechanical beast. "You shall be _destroyed!_" yelled Sechs. The monstrous replicate jammed a thick robot-finger into an eye-socket. That metal finger prodded around until it felt the bio-chip. Another _poke _cracked that chip-brain. Then Sechs gave a final _kick _to Sieben's headless body.

By now, the crowd was in such open-mouthed awe that Kyrie was able to break free. She threw off her messenger bag, then began to run over to where Sechs stood over Sieben's headless body. In running, the girl also had something clutched in her hands... She swung it at Sechs, screaming "_Killer!"_

There was a flash of light and a blast of sparks where Kyrie's high-yield taser had struck Sechs' right-side machine-arm. But the intense electrical blast had only caused Sech's right arm to spasm upward--to _hit _Kyrie and knock her away, like a doll struck by an machine...

When Kyrie hit the street, she was left lying on her side--her long hair spread out like a fallen banner. One leg splayed out, arms spread, her body looking uncomfortably positioned, her hair was obscuring her face. The girl wasn't moving...

"And _that _is the end of the fight," said Sechs, both arms now marred with damage. Left hand still cradling the severed head, Sechs crouched down to wrap the right arm around the body. "This scrap shall be destroyed." Then the monster-replicate turned to walk away, the armored boots clomping...

_Walking away with Seiben... _Kyrie tried to sit up. The ribs on the lower left side of her chest filled her body..._with pain. This pain was going right up to her head... Kyrie saw everything through a haze of dazzled pain and felt close to blacking out. Her own hair was also obscuring her vision, leaving her vaguely thinking that maybe a long braid-hairdo would have been better. But Sieben was killed... No, a person does not kill a robot. Sieben was broken, and now that Sechs replicate was taking her away._

Then something else started happening. "Give me that!" yelled another girl's voice in the crowd. Eyes looked at her because there was a lot to look at--especially for the boys. The source of the voice was a girl in her late teens or so. She had biker-boots on her feet with too-tight jeans, along with a white tee-shirt with dark leather jacket worn over, her fluffy auburn hair just beyond shoulder length. The too-tight jeans and tight-fitting top showed off a bit too much of her athletic and womanly figure, the jacket showing bosom whenever it move.

Her face had on a smirk--light brown eyes glinting with amusement. "You think you can fight me for it? Okay meat-bag, let's rumble!" _Flick! _Her left hand now had an open switchblade in it. "If you lose, I take your balls and leave you with a high-pitched voice."

Kyrie tried to turn herself around to see what all the noise was about this time. _What happens over...there and...? _And the pain increased. It was getting hard for her to breathe. Her chest was hurting. It was becoming…_too much. There was the sound of blood rushing to her eardrums. It was the sort of sound a person "heard" when there was just too much physical suffering for the brain to take. Kyrie was no cyborg or replicate. She was just slender flesh and bone, her body hurting. The pain of hurt shoved her into unconsciousness..._

2.

Kyrie was therefore not conscious when that girl in biker clothes flashed the switchblade a few more times. The boy stumbled backwards. And the same was true for the crowd. Nobody wanted to end up being sliced. They'd already seen _one _person slaughtered but did not want to be slaughtered in turn.

"Ya know," said the girl in biker-clothes. She waved the switchblade in the air a few feet from the boy. "I'd do the same thing in your position, taking easy money from weak people. But then my sister would bitch about it all day. You _don't _want to hear it when my sister starts bitching, and you _don't _want to be around me after putting up with her noise…especially after I've cut your balls off."

"Stop that, Vanessa!" shouted the girl's twin. Yes, the teenage girl with the switchblade actually had a twin sister--now crouching over in the middle of the street. Over there was a girl looked _exactly _the same: the same biker's outfit of jeans and tee shirt worn over a gymnast-fit body, outfit complete with the same boots, same kind of leather jacket and everything. "This girl could _use some help_, you know!"

"Alright already, Vicki! Jeez!" declared the girl standing here. _Flick! _Her switchblade disappeared. "Like, you're _so-o-o _lucky. I was _r-r-re-e-ally _thinking about what to do with your severed nuts, meat-bag." She deftly bent over to pick up the messenger bag. Then she gave a parting glare to the boy before turning to walk over to where her sister Vicki was tending to that young girl lying in the street.

"Yes, she's still breathing," said Vicki, glancing up to see Vanessa. "I think some of her ribs are maybe cracked. And maybe she's had some whiplash damage to her spine. Did you _see _how hard that robot hit her? We _have_ to get her to a hospital..." But there were no hospitals, not anymore: just clinics, mainly for cyborgs, some for humans. "Get her to a clinic." Vicki then took off her synth-leather jacket and spread it out like a blanket next to Kyrie.

Someone in the crowd whistled appreciatively at Vicki taking off that one item of clothing. "Take off some more! I've got twenty creds for your tight pants!"

"Shut it, perv!" yelled back Vanessa. She lowered her voice and spoke to Vicki. "Okay, sis. Let's get this corny saint-stuff out of the way. There's gonna be a _party _tonight, and I don't want some big-eyed kid putting a cramp in my style... _Hmmph_, glad you took off your jacket for a mini-stretcher. Pervs..."

And that was what they were going to do--use Vicki's synthetic leather jacket for a mini-stretcher. Vicki saw the girl being hit by that...replicate--that metal-bodied robot. The blow had struck the torso to the left of the midsection. Vicki had _carefully _felt that part of the girl's torso and did not feel anything broken there. Since she also saw the girl's legs moving before fainting, there was probably not any spinal injury. But it was better safe than sorry.

More than a few centuries ago, the thing to do would have been to call for things like _ambulance _and _police. _Except there was no such thing as _police--_only Net-men and bounty hunters who did nothing but kill criminals. There was no such thing as real hospitals anymore, either: only clinics. And those clinics mainly existed to replace damaged human body parts with cyborg-ones. That, or if a person's body was injured to the point of severe bleeding, the thing to do was just remove the human brain and put it into a cyborg-body.

The first thing they had to do was move the injured and unconscious girl safely to where she could be helped. Tire-Wire Alley had plenty of brawls, some of them involving humans as well as cyborgs. So there was a decent medical clinic a few blocks away. Vicki first made sure that the girl was still breathing and had a heartbeat. Then the twins _carefully _rolled the girl onto this impromptu stretcher in such a way that the back and neck were aligned--and positioned her onto her back. With the injured girl on the open jacket, her legs and arms dangling off the sides, Vicki and Vanessa both lifted the jacket together—again, like a stretcher. It was especially easy to do since Kyrie was just so light. And _Kyrie was lifted into another place..._

_Everything was dark and wrong. There was the vague feeling of laying atop a table in a dark place she had never been in before. Darkness above, there was…nothing but a darkness darker than the darkness between the stars at night. That, even though the girl knew that there were creatures nearby. This was some kind of place for doctors. Except the "doctors" here were not of the sort that cared for patients. These "doctors" were scientists. And she was a subject atop a laboratory table. _

_She could not move her legs or any other part of her body. It was a feeling of odd cold all over--that feeling of numbness mixed in with pins and needles from her feet to her head. This numbness made her mind spin with dizziness and confusion. She blacked out for a moment again. Was someone talking about food?_

_There was a spotlight glaring down on her from the darkness--like a glare from a stern angel of judgment. There was a spotlight, but there was no seeing the actual source of the light that glared down from the darkness. Where was the light _really _coming from? It was impossible to tell. _

_A blurry white figure approached to stand over her. It was just that, a figure, because it looked more or less human. The figure had four arms and a blurred head... The head looked as if it was on fire. What kind of creature was this! _

_A _monster, _that was it! The girl wanted to scre-e-eam, the scream of fear filling her mind but not coming out of her mouth. Two of those arms had automated surgical blades of the sort used to cut open skulls. In fact, there was still the dull red stain around the circumference of the blades. Those blades were going to cut open her skull…_

_ Bwe-e-e-e-e-e…! The blades produced a Hellishly loud turned on as the arms lowered towards her forehead. I am still awake, she wanted to scream. Do not do this to me-e-e-e! Please, please do not! Do not hurt me! Ple-e-ea-ase…! _

_Even as that sound became louder and the blades approached the skin of her forehead, her mind screamed in fear. It was as if she was dead already, and the creature with the burning head was here to cut open her head and take whatever was inside. Though numb, the girl felt the sharp prick and the following vibrations as the screaming, spinning blades cut into her forehead. She could fee-e-el the vibration of the spinning blade as it began spin-cutting into her skull... _

…

_"A-a-a-ai-a-a-agh-h-h…!" _screamed the girl…the scream ending in a slight choking sound. She sat up on the little mattress on this floor, the white blanket coming off in the process. The girl then put her right hand to the place on her body where the sick feeling was coming from--her midsection. Beneath her tee shirt, she had on her brassiere--of course--and something else. It seemed hard and a little numb. _Did they…? _The girl lifted her tee shirt just enough to bare her midriff.

There was a bandage there--a tight white cloth-bandage that went all around her midsection, just at that place where abdomen met sternum. Since her abdomen was flesh and not articulated metal, it meant that Kyrie was still human. They did not take her body and replace it with a robotic one. That was the way human medicine was these days: if the body was damaged, just replace what stopped working. If too damaged, don't bother with healing and replace the victim's body with a cyborg one.

They had not replaced her body with a cyborg one… But who were _they? _Where was she now? She looked looked around this bare and square room with hard and flat floor with square metal tiles of a dull color. It still hurt to breathe a little. The pain… Then Kyrie remembered.

"_Sieben!_" she gasped aloud, tugging down her top again. The girl then threw off the rest of the blanket and put her socks-covered feet to the tiled floor in trying to stand up, feeling sick and dizzy. Socks, shorts and tee shirt… Where were her shoes? And where was her jacket? Her shoes, they were right here.

It was an effort for her to kneel down on both knees to get them from the side of the bed on the floor. Kyrie put them on. Then she would get out of this place and go home to make plans and get money. Then she could come back to Tire-Wire Alley and hire some people to do something…

A possibly familiar girl's voice sounded out from out in the hallway. "Like, she's not whimpering in her sleep anymore. Must be awake by now."

The source of the voice stepped around the corner of the doorway and walked on in: a late-teenage sort of girl in biker boots and tight jeans worn with form-fitting white tee-shirt and black leather jacket, a round sort of face, darkish-brown hair fluffed out from the scalp, hair a little longer than shoulder-length.

Kyrie blinked when exactly the same kind of teenage-looking girl came in behind the first one--carrying Kyrie's messenger bag and jacket. Those two standing side by side, Kyrie could not tell the difference between the two. "Are you feeling okay enough to walk?" asked this second girl. "I brought your things. But I have to tell you ahead of time that the clinic doctors took half of your money. They had to be paid half the money for your treatment, drugs and stuff. Since your body chemistry is a little bit different than usual, they had to use some other kinds of painkillers."

"We wouldn't mind a little bit on the side for our own services," added the first girl, hooking her thumbs in her jeans and posing with one leg out. "People don't work for free, ya know. And we were on our way to do some work in a club, too. The other half of what you've got would do just fine. I was gonna just take it since you were unconscious to save you the trouble of digging around to hand it over."

"Vanessa!" complained the second girl, looking at her twin sister. She again turned her head to face Kyrie. "Oh… You have to forgive my sister. She's a little bit more concerned about money issues than I am. Here you go." This second girl gave Kyrie her jacket. When Kyrie put it on, the second girl then handed over Kyrie's messenger bag. "I'm sorry about her."

"Who's sorry? You're sorry, Vicki!" grumped the first teenage-looking girl, the one named Vanessa. This Vanessa then looked down at Kyrie. "Listen up, little girl. We've saved your life and your stuff. A little compensation would be nice. Even if you are one of the million or so meat-bags who cares and appreciates robots, a little monetary show of appreciation wouldn't hurt." Vicki, the other twin, shook her head. "Well, how about it?"

"Oh-h-h, _umm..._ Give me a moment," sighed Kyrie. As she reached into her jacket, her head still swam with sickness. The feeling just wasn't from the drugs the clinic doctors used on her. It was a sickness and pain of loss. That monster had _ripped off Sieben's head! _After Kyrie rewarded these two, then would come…_revenge…for_… Tears dripped down from her cheeks. But she found some of the high-denomination credit-chips hidden within inner-pockets of her jacket. "I… I thank you for giving aid to me in a time…of need…" The sobs overtook her, made her sink to her knees and clutch her aching abdomen. Her ribs were hurting her even through the medication, and crying only made it worse--the pain reminding her of what happened even more, making her even more full of sadness. The anger would come later.


	5. Chapter 5

Circle of Fate and Pain

Chapter 5—Fists, Pain and Revenge

by Elliot Bowers

1.

It was morning here in this border-neighborhood of Scrap Iron City, which meant that there was almost no one walking the sidewalks. The Motorball business crowd was probably still asleep from the madness and insanity of last night's sport--and recovering from the drunken, loud excesses afterwards. Almost no one walked the sidewalks. No vehicles rumbled along the street. There actually were a few parked trucks across the street, yet those vehicles sat silently.

The cyborgs of hereabouts must have partied away last night's victories--or drowned the misery of their defeats in alcohol and other drugs. At least the statement was true for those who survived last night's defeats, because Motorball was the sort of sport in which losers did not always live to play again.

It was this time and this place where and when the twins stepped out double doors and onto the sidewalk—the doors of the health clinic for those who still had human bodies. One of the twins held open one of these doors as so a third person could emerge from the building. It was the petite girl with large, gold-colored eyes and pale-blonde hair—those eyes of hers suddenly squinting shut against the glare.

"_Ah!_" gasped Kyrie, staggering a little upon being hit with a full glare of the morning city sun. One of the twins stopped and looked down in concern; the other twin crossed her arms and smirked. "I did not expect such intensity!"

Not only that, but Kyrie's eyes being so sensitive could have been a lingering side-effect of the medication given to her by clinic workers. Or it could have been the surprise of seeing morning when expecting the afternoon. How long had she been unconscious and recovering? It must have been for the length of yesterday.

"I apologize," said Kyrie, recovering from the initial surprise of brightness. Still, her eyes were squinched shut while she put her right hand into her messenger bag, rummaging around until she could…find…her…sunglasses… Ah! Here they are! She put them on. "I am better accommodated now."

"Alrighty then!" exclaimed the twin standing with jacket-covered arms crossed. That must be Vanessa. Kyrie couldn't tell the difference between the two girls unless she heard them speak. "So like, can we get going and stuff? The day isn't getting any younger with us filling the air with noises that the meat-bag humans like to make."

"Vanessa!" exclaimed the other twin. "Please forgive my sister for being a little sharp with you. She's always a little bit on edge with everyone. Even with our friends, be they human, cyborg or otherwise."

"Like... _As if!_" blurted the first twin. She looked down at Kyrie. "No offense to your kind, honey, but you jelly-brained humans are sometimes a little slow on the uptake. But you're a little smarter than most since you can appreciate robots. Otherwise..."

_Cla-flack... _The door to the clinic opened behind Kyrie. Everyone looked to the left, seeing some curly haired young man in slacks and tee shirt come st-st-_stag-stag-staggering _out of the place. He wavered left...then right...and limped away. About his tee-shirt... Kyrie noticed the ragged remains of something once attached to the back of the staggering man's tee-shirt collar, as if something was ripped away. Never mind that, then.

"I can understand her terse attitude to an extend," said Kyrie. Her sunglasses-covered eyes looking up at Vicki. "Yet are we not all human? I can see that your hands--and your wrists--are flesh. And as there is no mark upon your forehead, your brain is also made of the 'jelly' known as nerve tissue."

"What the Hell!" exclaimed Vanessa. "You're saying that _I'm _human? Wrong, wrong, _wrong! _Jeez...! People were telling me that you were a smart one. And you _still _haven't figured out what we are? Listen, we only look human 'cause that's how we were made. Course, my sis here likes to fool you people as long as possible. "But I don't care. Looks like you need a little proof. Hey, watch this..." _Flick! _

Just that sound and a blur of motion, and Vanessa's open switchblade was in her left hand. That blade glinted in the morning light. It was a sharp silver color against the back of a pale and delicate fingert--preparing to open flesh.

"You think I'm a meat-bag human, do you?" asked Vanessa. "If you have at least a little smarts, you'd know what color human bones are supposed to be. And it's not going to be _this _color."

_Do not do this, _thought Kyrie. But even the thought came too late. Before she could say anything, Vanessa had already slid the blade across the flesh of her right hand's knuckles. Kyrie felt even more sick for just a moment, expecting the inevitable weeping of blood...

Except...there was none. Blinking behind her sunglasses, Kyrie recovered enough to look again at Vannessa's right hand. The substance that leaked out of Vanessa's slit knuckles wasn't blood at all. It had a dull gray color to it, and it oozed. Vanessa then clenched and flexed the fingers to widen the cuts of the knuckles--revealing the silvery glints of metal joint-works: _robotic _joint-work of a _robotic _skeleton.

"See? I told you so! Not human, don't _want _to be human!" _Flick! _Another inhumanly fast blur, and Vanessa's switchblade disappeared. Kyrie did not know where--since Vanessa's jeans were too tight to conceal a weapon, and she did not see the blur cross the jacket-pocket.

"Can we go somewhere else and talk about this?" pleaded Vicki. She looked at Kyrie. "And _please _don't tell anybody? _Ple-e-ase...? _You know what the laws are. Since we're not real people, it wouldn't be against the laws for humans to hurt us."

"Yeah, whatever! As if those jelly-brained humans could come close to hurting us!" complained Vanessa. "Anyway... Where are we dumping you? Since you've already paid for our services, we could just go off to do whatever after this. I wanna _party!_"

Kyrie thought of her now-lonely home out on the grassless field just outside of Tire-Wire Alley. She thought of the long and gritty path of sandy soil that led to the one lone building. It would be a long walk home by herself and without Sieben by her side. And it would be very lonely there..._without Sieben. Without..._

"Wait a second, Vanessa!" exclaimed Vicki. She then bent over slightly and hugged Kyrie--who was now sobbing, tears wetting the bottoms of her sunglasses. "Come on now! Please don't cry! We'll be here for you. We don't have to do much of anything today anyway. Isn't that right, Vanessa?"

"_What! " _blurted Vanessa, standing apart with hands on hips--the hand with slit knuckles no longer oozing gray liquid. "Whatever... You want a new bodyguard setup after your last girlfriend was trashed in a fair fight? No problem. We can do that. It'll be your money! So yes... Come with us to our apartment-styled office." Vanessa made a _come on _gesture to lead the walking way to the place referred.

Kyrie hurried up to begin walking with these twins to wherever it was that they were going. She walked to their right, both of them side by side at her left as they went along this sidewalk. Walking also seemed to help get rid of the lingering doses of drugs inside of Kyrie's body: She was feeling less fluttery and weak. The girl was actually feeling well enough to contemplate taking off her sunglasses... No, _that _was not a good idea: Just lifting her sunglasses halfway made her stagger from the glare. Kyrie hoped the drugs from the clinic didn't permanently affect her eyes. After all, the Net-men and Deck-men had no way of overseeing the manufacture and usage of all drugs. The laws were from Zalem, which was kilometers in the sky and kilometers away...

They crossed the main street of this border neighborhood: not a problem since the only traffic this time of day was maybe a big rickety truck or two driven by a big cyborg whose electromechanical body was probably just as strong as the vehicle he or she was controlling. When they set foot on this other sidewalk, Kyrie spoke up. "Are we to leave this border neighborhood for the deeper portions of Scrap Iron City?"

"It's not far. Almost there," said Vicki or Vannessa. Kyrie didn't know which. Just then, thirty men on bicycles made for _clatt-clattering_ noises as they pedaled by. The wheels were made of a ridged hard plastic and never became flat, the outside of the wheels being ridged as so they could grip the street. Wheels that didn't become flat were less expensive that way since they didn't become flat. Yet the problem was in how they made for a lot of noise if a lot of them were together. It was a lot of noise. All that Kyrie could do was follow the twins among the racket.

After that odd interruption, they came to a fenced-off industrial area. There was a cluster of four buildings at the right of the cracked parking lot. It actually must have been a parking lot long ago because some abandoned hulks of vehicles and rusted machines left out in the open. The long and busy street of Tire-Wire Alley ended here. It was also a great deal more quiet. It was too quiet, and Kyrie had a worried sort of feeling.

"Hey, what's wrong?" asked one of the twin girls. "Oh-h-h! Ha-ha..." She gave a wave of her right hand. "Don't worry! You must've heard those silly stories about this place being infested with crazy mutants and killers. They're not true."

"Do you wish to imply that all mutants are destructive creatures of hatred? I myself ama mutant!" declared Kyrie, putting her hands on her hips and looking up at both the twins girls in biker clothes. "In any event, I have not heard any such stories. Yet the sorts of stories that must be said regarding my kind are of a negative sort. Perhaps some would _prefer _that mutants live hereabouts."

"_O-o-ok-a-y-y-y-y..._" voiced Vanessa, giving the careful tone of voice one used in talking to unruly children or off-balanced people. "Like, listen here. Those rumors are really good at keeping human _trash_ away from here. Humans, what a bunch of pathetic meat-bags... They've got those really weak meat-bodies, and they get all weak and pathetic when exposed to most any factory chemical for too long. Then they have to be _fed _and _clothed _and kept _not too hot _and _not too cold! _Oh, and they have to drink and drink so much!

"So anyway. We're going up to our place. And if you wanna hire us to be your bodyguard and stuff, you'll have to come up to our office. So what's up? Do you want us or not?"

"I... I would very much like to hire you," said Kyrie to the twin standing on the left. She said that and thought of why she had followed these two near-strangers to this place. It was because of seeing Sieben fighting and being destroyed by that monstrous _other _replicate. Sieben fought until she was weakened and on her knees. She just looked so weak and sad. Then Sechs brutally _killed _her and took her away. A replicate was technically not a living thing: a robot. Yet Sieben was as alive and as real a person to Kyrie as any human being--and more than that. Kyrie began to quiver with anger...

"_Wa-hey!_" said the gynoid-twin on the left, Vanessa. "You should see how you look right now! I've seen that kind of look in a human's eyes. Like, you're not fully human and all, but still... Never mind. You know what I mean. It looks like you wanna talk business. Come on up to our office."

They went into one of the seemingly abandoned industrial buildings. The first floor of the place was primarily and single open space that was dimly lit with light shining through windows grimed with rust and lingering grease. Hulks of forgotten manufacturing machines sat silently on the floor, making for blocky and shadowy shapes. At the far left was a metal stairway that went up to a narrow walkway on the second floor...

It was dim enough here for Kyrie to take off her sunglasses and follow the twin's lead. A set of concrete steps went upstairs. The stairway's metal handrail was rusted in places. "Don't lean on it," said one of the twins. "Just keep going up."

Kyrie let go of the hand rail and carefully kept going up the metal stairs—her light feet making tapping sounds. Though she had let go of the rail, there was a bit of grease and bits of rust still on the palm of her right hand. That grease on the rail was probably from chemical vapors given off by the long-abandoned machines. That must be because she could smell the oily machine-smell coming from the Factory-building floor.

Then came the top of the stairs. Vanessa did something to a metal door up here to open it: some kind of lock. Unfortunately, a lot of city people lived in old places like this. What must have kept most away was the lingering chemical contamination that Kyrie could actually smell—even clinging slightly to her face and hands. A person living here could very well develop all kinds of diseases and cancers—or have children with slight mutations. Those would be children…like herself. That in mind, Kyrie followed Vicki and Vanessa into this upper-story room.

_Flick! _Lights came on. "_Ah!_" gasped Kyrie as she fumbled for the sunglasses she had just taken off. The sudden glare of indoor light was another surprise... When she put back on her sunglasses, she was able to see this upstairs place--a place the size of a bedroom and living room side-by-side. Bare cinderblock walls were on all four sides, and the bare hard floor was dust-free. Three incandescent light-fixtures hung from wires and shone down on this space and added to the light from the small windows.

Yet this place was not bare and empty. There were six metal chairs set against the far right-side wall--set next to a shelf-set with a big audio-player entertainment machine--with even bigger speakers. There was also a shelf of official-looking but aging books on a bookshelf next to it. At the far left was a shelf of official-looking--but old--technical books next to a rack of clothes: all of them various styles of synthetic-leather jackets, synthetic-leather skirts: some especially _risque_ outfits probably more worthy of prostitutes. (Or maybe the twins did some of that as well?) There were also two trunks. Something was not quite right...

Then Kyrie knew what it was. There were no containers for drinking water or even empty bottles of any sort. And there was no such place for food, either. Most city people did not have enclosed places to call home. Kyrie had visited some (rare) friends who managed to find the occasional abandoned structure to live in. But those other people she visited had _food _and _water..._and a little privacy. If there was any doubt that the twin girls were actually robots beneath their human appearances, those doubts were gone. Only robots could live this cleanly and simply...

Vicki crossed her arms, the leather of her synthetic jacket making crinkling sounds. She looked at a wall. "Yeah, you can see how we don't need much to live off of... We don't need food or water, or even too many pairs of clothes. So many humans have such a hard time with necessities like that, always having to struggle for food and water, always going for money to survive. Vanessa and I, we don't have to worry about that since we're not real people. The technical word for us is 'gynoid'--female humanoid robots."

Vanessa _flopped _to sit down on the hard floor, crossed her ankles, then put her hands behind her head. "Damned right! We could get naked for you right now and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between us and _homo sapiens_." She then quickly sat up, a mischievous grin on her face as she put hands to the top zipper of her jacket. "Wanna see?"

"Vanessa!" complained Vicki. "My sister and I have the same synthetic body-type, synthetic skina and artificial muscle tissue over titanium skeletons. Both of us have electronics for minds. But we have different programming. We've been able to stay functioning for so long because we've got small supplies of prototype nanobots inside of us."

"Which was why I didn't give a damn about cutting my knuckles to show you something," added Vanessa. "Look! Wow, my hand repaired itself already. It must be all the grit in the air for raw material. It's nano-wonderful! Now if you're done gawking at our place, let's talk about your revenge."

2.

To put the plan in action, they would need money: lots of credit-chips. Kyrie almost never spent money on anything besides food and clothes. Things like household appliances and parts, she could find among the paths and hills of the Scrapyard lands. So the girl had a great deal of money hoarded away. Now was time to use at least some of it. Vicki and Vanessa escorted Kyrie out of Tire-Wire Alley and went with her along the long path that crossed the gritty field on the way home.

In the meanwhile, they had a lot to talk about while walking. "It must be pretty lonely out here," said Vicki. "There's just your building between Scrap Iron City and the Scrapyard and stuff...way out here..."

"Hmmph," went the other twin. "I wouldn't mind getting away from those meat-bags myself. Some of 'em are cool. But most of them don't care about anything but beer, food and making money to buy beer and food. Meat-bags... They're only good for money--and maybe some of them are good to eat."

_Eating...people? _Kyrie suddenly felt a bit unsteady, unsettled at hearing this. She knew that there were cases of people eating dead bodies when there was nothing to eat. Corpses were meat--free meat that did not have to be paid for in the eyes of those starving. And random violence makes for more than the occasional dead body. Cyborgs were also capable of eating flesh. Were these two girls going to wait for them to be far away from the city...?

"Hey! Don't worry!" exclaimed Vicki. "Don't listen to my sister. We don't need to do that sort of thing anymore because we've got miniaturized fusion generators inside us--unlimited energy. And we've got tiny supplies of prototype stuff called 'nano-bots.' We don't need to eat or drink--just need to inhale every so often to take in airborne elements."

The house-building was there across the hard-packed dirt-field, and it seemed to her as if she could not walk fast enough. And she entered the unlocking code to the front doors almost on her knees. But the exhaustion she physically felt was not as strong as her desire to fix what was wrong.

"Wait here. I shall not be long," she said to the twins now standing at the entrance. Those armored doors of the house were not even fully open when Kyrie went inside and down into a sub-basement of this place. The sub-basements were built as bunkers to hide against potential nuclear blasts of the War that happened centuries before in human history. Those sub-basements still lasted. Now they were where Kyrie had years of unspent credits stored away.

Some minutes later, the girl came back upstairs and outside. Her messenger bag still had a noticeable sag in the middle as it weighted heavily against her left shoulder--heavy with cash. Also noticeable was the fist-sized cloth package she gripped in both hands, her slender arms trembling. "Take this please," she said.

Vanessa reached down, took it up, and opened it up immediately. "Far _out! _Look at all of this cash-_money!_" she exclaimed. "Now we'll _really _be sure to do business with you. We won't do something like outright facing that ugly Sechs monster. But we _will _go through with this plan... Say, that messenger bag of yours looks a little heavy--a handful of heavy _money _in there. Mind if I carry it for you?"

It was actually Vicki that took up the messenger bag for Kyrie as they walked their way back towards that border neighborhood of Scrap Iron City--walking that sand-and-loam path that cut through the field. Vanessa mumbled something about humans not being trusting enough while Vicki was more concerned about this young, strange-eyed girl who seemed to have so much money but so few friends. Halfway there, Vicki also offered to carry Kyrie the rest of the way since the girl looked close to collapsing. After all, Kyrie _did _have some of her ribs broken and tightly bound.

Kyrie went painfully down on one bare knee, her shorts certainly not coming close to her knees. The twins stopped. "_Ah-h-h.. Ah-h-h..._" Her breath came in gasps for a few moment. When one of the twins approached to help, Kyrie forced herself to stand again. "Do not be deceived by my somewhat childish appearance! I am an adult and can care for myself," insisted Kyrie though one of her hands strayed to her shirt, to the place on her torso where the ribs were broken. "We are nearly returned. This plan shall be completed before tomorrow. Or it may already be too late. Late or not, we _shall _do this."

"You heard the girl," said Vanessa. "Let's boogie!" When Kyrie began walking again, so did the other two sisters. They were going to get things done in Tire-Wire Alley. These things were going to take a bit of money and a bit more time. Yes, it was a crazy plan--only as crazy as what a wet-brained human would think up. And it being a crazy, deviously destructive plan was a fun enough reason for Vanessa to agree to it. The pay wasn't bad, either.

Almost half an hour later, there was Kyrie sitting on an old metal chair in one of those back-alleys that went off the main street. There were about ten strong-looking people of all kinds, male and female, some of them with more or less clothing over their bodies. Most of them were cyborgs and had bared metal where clothes did not cover. They were listening to the young pretty girl and her sad story--seeing her friend getting killed right in front of her. So _that _was what happened yesterday... Is Sechs still in the neighborhood?

"Yeah, I saw that monster-machine thing," shouted one wild-haired male cyborg. He was certainly a Factory-worker sort, broad-bodied with electromechanical limbs thick as steel telephone poles. "That Sech-thing you're talkin' about, it's still sniffin' around and askin' questions about _replicates _and stuff. She ain't leavin' any time soon, I don't think. Don't know where she goes after sunset, though."

Kyrie looked to one of the bigger worker-cyborgs leaning against a concrete wall, a seven-foot and broad-bodied male cyborg with the unlikely name of Albert. "We have until near-sunset, then. Albert, is that enough time to gather the construction materials and equipment? I can understand how moving Factory property could be a problem."

"Nah, don't worry 'bout it, kiddo," gruffed Albert. He stopped leaning against the wall and gestured Eastward, indicating the part of this neighborhood deeper within Scrap Iron City. "Them robot-brained Deckmen sometimes don't really care much 'bout what we do with surplus portable machinery. Would you believe it? Them robot-idiots would lose their own squid-lips if some machine up in Zalem had a glitch. Yeah, so them machines we done got, they got lost. Besides, so long as our production quotas are up to snuff, they wouldn't care if we danced the booga-loo every other day of the week and broke plates while we were at it. Robots, what a bunch a' stiff-necked idiots…!"

"Hey...!" spoke up one of the artificial girls. Kyrie looked leftward--both twins leaning with jacket-covered backs against the left wall of this alley. "Like, could you go easy on the robot comments? It's not like people walk around making talk about flesh-brains."

"Okay! Whatever, girlie..." commented Albert, shrugging his gigantic cyborg worker's shoulders. He looked at Kyrie and jerked a thumb towards the far exit of this alleyway. "Kid, you give the word, and I'll get me and my boys to forklift, winch and bolt everything you've got written up into place...right here. The generators might take more than a hot minute to set up, but... Yeah." He saw Kyrie close her eyes and nod her consent. "Alright!" cheered Albert, looking to the miscellaneous ragtag group of working folks from the city streets. "You heard the little lady. Let's earn some money today. You got paid today, so you work today."

They made it back to Tire-Wire Alley long before the day was through. All the same, it was getting to be late--the sun now positioned halfway to the horizon. They had a lot to do, and there was probably barely enough time to do it. Now the shadows of the buildings were getting to be just a bit longer as the hired Factory workers began doing the real physical labor of the plan. The promised forklifts, small but noisy vehicles with motorized lifters on front, began to carry the two large engine-shaped generators into the alley itself.

Kyrie was sitting across the street, sitting at a table with a big hand-made umbrella over it. From here it was easy to see the forklifts moving things into place and the workers setting things up according to the plans, a copy of the plans set atop this table. She was also drinking a tall glass of lemonade, preferring the taste of something sweet and cool. Beneath her tee shirt and her wrap-around bandage, her sides were beginning to ache a little.

The artificial girls came walking back to sit at this table. One crossed her legs and arms, leaning back. The other one leaned forward to speak confidently. "Kyrie? Umm... We found two really big guys who said they'd fight for you. Actually, Vanessa found them. They're gladiators and want to get some extra action outside of the Arena."

"Heh-heh..." chuckled the other twin. "Yeah, they wanted to get some 'action' alright. My olfactory sensors could almost smell the synthetic testosterone on their breath. Vicki, were you even paying attention to how those flesh-brains were sizing you up?"

"I overlooked that and stuff," said Vicki. "Anyway, we gave them a third of the money you gave us and showed them the rest of it to give them if they came through. They said they'd be around here in half an hour, said something about getting ready."

"Getting crazy drunk, they mean," leered Vanessa. "Just to humor them, I wanted to go hang out with them a little bit... You know, get to know the new hires. Then Vicki here was getting all impatient and stuff. If we were meat-bag humans, I'd say my sister here was getting into that time of the month. Or she was sexually frustrated. After all, we _were _programmed to be human...in all kinds of ways." Vicki went into open-mouthed shock. "Come on, sis! You know how it is! Now close your mouth. Most species of flying insects are extinct, but you never know when one might fly in."

Kyrie vaguely wondered how these twins maintained such a close relationship for so long despite the animosity they had--and how far apart their personalities were. Vicki was the more caring and thoughtful one; her twin Vanessa was more rebellious and less scrupulous. Vicki seemed to prefer relating to human beings; Vanessa would much prefer to eat human beings, maybe. How did they remain close? It probably had something to do with their programming. As human as they looked and sounded, these girls were machines inside.

Had Vanessa not said anything, Kyrie would really have thought these two girls to be human. But now she was getting other little signs of them not being so--such as how both of them were not sweating even though they were both wearing jeans, biker boots and leather jackets over shirts. There was also how both of the girls never blinked unless a person was talking directly to them. Otherwise, they would just steadily stare--their artificial eyes never drying, never yielding. They could very easily pass for being just as human as any set of late-teenage girls, especially since they seemed to have intelligence and conversational abilities that even exceeded that of the "robotic" Deckmen and Net-men.

Kyrie thought that there were just humans, cyborgs and replicates. What long-lost technology could produce bodies that were totally made of synthetic flesh over muscle? Could there be more _gynoids _like Vicki and Vanessa deeper in Scrap Iron City--pretending to be human? Or it would have been best to continue pretending to be human, because the few laws there were in Scrap Iron City tended to protect human brains. Replicates--those with computer-minds--were not protected by the law. Like Sieben, these artificial girls could be killed without the law caring...

"What's wrong?" asked one of the twins, must be Vicki. "You've become quiet all of a sudden. But you know what I think? I think your plan is going to be built exactly the way you want it. And since that Sechs-replicate likes to fight, your plan will be really easy. So don't worry. I want to help your idea work because I hate troublemakers, people who make so much trouble for everyone else."

"Like, really!" exclaimed Vanessa. "A little trouble every so often doesn't hurt. At least it doesn't hurt _us,_" countered Vanessa in disagreeing with her sister. "Oh yeah... Remember that time, a long time ago, when we had that beer blast in Jamie's apartment? _Ha-ha... _All the meat-bags became _stupid-drunk! _I just kept drinking right along with 'em and they just kept drinking and drinking. Stupid idiots, it's never a good idea to get into a drinking contest with a gynoid!" Vanessa then looked to Kyrie. "Anyway, at least _you _are gonna have some appreciation for a little troublemaking. I know part of your plan meant seducing Sechs into coming here. So I took a bit of that money you gave us for hiring cyborgs and..."

Deeper within Scrap Iron City, the results of Vanessa's latest doing was just coming to fruition. This place was officially a drinking-bar—as listed within the databases of the robotic Netmen. Yet people sometimes spent their credits on food to go with it while hanging out with friends after work. Except now that hanging out meant that most of the people were slumped over from last-nights drinking, smoking and what-not.

None of them looked up when the doors _whapped _open. The doors were nearly whacked off of their hinges, it being opened so fast! Heads and eyes--be those eyes real or robotic--turned to look in the direction of the noise. And it turned out to have been quite a jarring sight.

Standing there was like something out of a dying man's fever-induced nightmare: a figure wearing a strange and ridged bodysuit, knee-length armor-boots and a crazy pair of huge robotic arms, crazy hair radiating out from the scalp. The figure was snarling and shaking a handful of paper in one of its huge hands. For those in the bar who didn't know, that was Sechs.

"_What foolishness is this!_" roared the monstrous replicate standing over there at the open doorway, shaking the papers. Some downtrodden drinkers at the nearest tables tumbled out of their seats. "I demand to know _who _posted these _false statements!_ Such childish scrawls and crude drawings, such _incorrect words!_"

_Hic... _"Wh-h... What's all th' _ruckus?_" asked someone in sitting up, a metal-faced cyborg-man in buttoned shirt. Actually, some of those buttons were undone at the moment--as was the cyborg's sobriety. "Yer killin' my buzz! Now I'm gonna _h-h-have _to-o-o drink _extra hard _to make up...fer the loss to my efforts...towards gettin' plastered of c-c-course... _Hic!_"

Sechs glared at the blatant drunkard for a moment, then looked away--to look at the barkeeper at the far end of this bar. "You, _barkeep! _Stay there!"

_Clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp... _Sech's big armored footwear made for heavy sounds on the old ferro-ceramic tiles in stomping over here to the drinking bar. The beastly stride, the clomping boots, that could only mean trouble. Such _trouble _usually translated as things becoming broken and violent.

_Not again, _thought the bald-headed barkeeper--a tan-skinned and muscular man in dapper clothes, black pants and white shirt, a black vest worn over. This barkeeper did not look especially nervous even though he had the idea that he should be. But he had seen more than his fair share of big loud robotic-bodied killers. They came here all the time to get drunk and loud. One more robotic monster with construction-machine arms was not going to make much difference to him. So he said, "Good afternoon. What seems to be the issue?"

_Swish...whank! _Sechs had slammed the now-disheveled pile of posters atop the drinking bar. The drinking bar was a huge and rectangular piece of titanium with a polished synthetic-wooden surface. So Sechs did not break the bar. Again, the barkeeper had his share of big loud robotic-bodied killing machines. Big loud robotic-bodied killers often times had the habit of slamming drinking bar counter-tops with big loud gestures. So the surface of the counter-top was built to withstand such big loud banging gestures from robotic killers.

At least the big loud gesture managed to put the posters atop the table. A perusing look on his face, the barkeeper picked up one of the posters--to peruse it, of course. The poster was black and white. On the bottom of the poster was something written in more black ink: _Sechs is a phony and a stupid-head. _Above the words was a big-headed drawing that looked a great deal like Sechs--the drawing was done in a style to make the body look dollishly small and the head look big and round. It was a surprisingly amusing drawing—one of Sechs as a sort of amusingly sadistic toy. It made him smile.

"Stop smiling!" snarled Sechs. One gigantic hand clenched into a head-sized metal fist held in front of the barkeeper's face. "The slightest effort, and I'll make you swallow your smile _and _your teeth. Is that what you want?"

"If you mess up my mouth, I won't be able to tell you where you can beat up the girl who posted this," said the bald barkeep. That gigantic fist was lowered. "Now... If you want take out your anger on the person who actually made the poster, you'd best head for Tire-Wire Alley. Or maybe you should've turned over the poster to find that out instead of coming in here and wasting energy?" The barkeeper turned over the poster to show a message written on the back, written in more of the same blocky handwriting:

If the big stupid-head wants to stop me from posting these posters, the stupid-head should come back to Tire Wire Alley an hour before sunset. I'll be there waiting to kick the stupid-head's metal butt--all covered with ugly plastic clothes. And the stupid-head is a fake, too!

That was what the poster said--insulting to the core. "Impetuous fool!" growled Sechs, again rereading the poster. But, of course, the barkeep was right about where to direct anger. Then the monstrous replicate gripped the handful of posters and began to stomp right back towards the door. The source of the posters would suffer for this insult.


	6. Chapter 6

Circle of Fate and Pain

Chapter 6—Sunset Collapses to Redness

1.

It was an hour before sunset when then came the _clomp-clomp-clomping_ beat of something heavy and powerful running along on armored boots. Armored boots clomping, gigantic robot-arms swinging, the black-clad figure ran hunched over... The robotic beast-machine wore a look of grotesque anger on its synthetic human-styled face... It was the nightmarish replicate Sechs: running into this neighborhood with the loping brutal stride of a feral beast that should have been extinct thousands of years ago yet still survived in an increasingly inhospitable environment. _Schr-r-r-r-a-a-acch! _Then Sechs came to a stop with armored boots digging into the street.

Cyborgs, businessmen, people-in-general turned their heads to look, their faces having that sort of _what-the-Hell-is-that _expression. And the few vehicles that dared to drive the road that Sechs was running on, those vehicles screeched to stops, veered around, and some just stopped.

Really, what the Hell _is _that thing? The torso and legs were covered with a ridged black bodysuit made of industrial leather, armored boots up to knees. A gigantic set of robotic arms were attached to the torso, arms that looked far too huge and armored to be supported by such a body. For a head, the nightmarish image had a sneeringly wild and scratched face, the scalp radiating short-cut spiky dark hair that looked as if it had been styled by a drunken cannibal's meat cleaver.

Then that beastly replicate scraped to a stop. It tilted back its head and opened the mouth. What followed was a _ro-a-ar _of anger that shook the street and quaked the air--making for a deep blast of sound that made everyone stop and look around--wondering if there was an earthquake. Truck windows nearby had been cracked. Some people were caught unawares and were temporarily deafened, staggering and disoriented.

In this terrible silence, the beastly replicate Sechs growled a challenge to all people present. "Who dares!"Clenching a gigantic construction-machine fist to the sunset-red sky, Sechs again roared. "_Who dares challenge my superiority!_"

_Fw-a-a-r-rp! _That was the sound of a truck's horn. Oh yes, a truck driver just made the terrible mistake of honking his vehicle's horn in anger. Then the truck driver leaned out of the vehicle's cab to shake his metal fist and shout at the ugly thing standing in the road. "What the Hell are ya doin'! People have got things to do!"

Sechs moved over to the truck in two monstrous strides… _Whank-k-k! _Propelled by an arm, Sechs' gigantic left fist had just _blasted_ into the mechanical innards of the truck's engine--up to the shoulder. This was followed by awful sounds of metal ripping and twisting as the monster-replicate gripped and reached around inside the truck's engine, molesting the mechanical works. With all of that internal damage being done to the truck-machine, something had to give...

_Fwoop! _A sudden gout of flame erupted from the damaged front of the truck. Smoke began filling the driver's area of the vehicle. The driver then decided that it was maybe time to step out of the truck and go for a nice little bit of late-day exercise. Except the exercise involved running as fast as possible in the other direction and screaming as if a demon had climbed up from Hell to destroy his life.

It was a good thing that the truck driver did get away because Sechs was not yet done with the truck. In an awesome display of _power, _Sechs then blasted the other head-sized metal fist into the truck's engine-works. _S-sh-hrak-k-k... Whank! _

Sechs pulled outward with both arms. It resulted in the front of the truck sort of..._coming apart. _So damaged, the entire front of the vehicle collapsed to the street in a jangled and mutilated mess of twisted metal. Flames and smoke flared and fluffed out from it. And the smoke went up to the reddening sky above, the crackling and hot rippling sound of fire flames mixed with the sound of the city breeze... Then came the shout of a teenage girl. "_He-e-ey there! _What's shakin', hot stuff!"

Snarling, Sechs' turned around. "_Over here! Or are your brains as small as your arms are big?_" Over by an alleyway opening was what looked like a human girl in old-fashioned biker boots, worn with tight-fitting jeans and tee-shirt--her jacket off, waving it in the air. "_We're over here, you big stupid-head! I bet you're stupid enough to run into a trap!_"

"_Ar-r-r-r-r... W-W-o-ooagh!_" howled the monstrous replicate. Behind it was the burning remains of the truck. The fire, it did not seem to affect that robotic beast of a thing--not at all. It in fact seemed to add to the fury burning within the wild-haired and black-clad humanoid creature of robotic metal. That beast then hunched over and began to run its way over to the alleyway, where the pale-skinned girl in old-styled biker clothes was still smiling and waving. Then--insult of insults--the girl patiently put on her jacket before spinning around halfway and dashing off into the alley itself.

Heated with anger, armored booted legs and huge machine-arms swinging, the Sechs replicate bounded over to this alley to follow. The alley was a space six meters wide and walled with buildings at the left and right sides. There were blocks of junk positioned along the left and right sides, much as most alleys sometimes have trash. Except something was not right... _Clack! _A doorway opened up near the far end of the alleyway, on the left side. Strangely enough, the doorway looked as if it had been coated with rubber.

"Like... _Geez_, you're dense!" she said, voice echoing in this alleyway. Sechs began _running _at that girl and did not hear what was said next. "Like, what did I just tell you, and..." Sechs was suddenly on the move again and getting too close. "_Whoops!_" _Whank! _The rubber-coated door slammed shut before Sechs was halfway to it. "_Do it!_" And that was when the chained lightning started...

Gigantic jagged streaks and arcs of electric blue shot out from both sides of this alleyway and kept shooting--a chaos of buzzing and cracking sounds. This sunset-shadowed alleyway was suddenly full of flaring and flashing strobe-lighting brighter than daylight. Arcs of insane electricity continued streaking and making jagged forks in a display of intense energy. This was an artificial electrical storm happening right here within a confined space. As artificial as it was, it was nevertheless _very _loud and _very _powerful.

And the Sechs-replicate was right in the middle of it as that electrifying blue shot through midriff and arms. More zigs and zags of snap-blast chained lightning streaked between the huge robotic arms and the armored boots, more of it going around the head. Among the flashes, the nightmarish replicate's face gritted with electrical intensity. This was Sechs doing the jerky spasmodic dance of those being subject to a great deal of intense electrical energy! This loud and electrifying dance went on for a while…

When it was over, the nightmarish replicate was standing stiffly with huge robotic arms extended, ridged black bodysuit smoking. And the hair looking as crazy as ever. Trails of smoke billowed up from the shoulders and head.

When the electrical madness was finally over, the engine-sized blocks of "junk" along the sides of the alleyway had long since burned away their camouflage. Now there were exposed metal machines smoking and crackling from overloading themselves, all of them with reduced electrical potential... Some red lights on the "junk" components blinked on while some others made low beeping sounds. Indeed, those engine-sized cubes of "junk" were the sources of this intense show of this lightning. show.

High above, nine people were crouching down and looking over the lips of the right-side building to look down into this alley--just leaning over far enough as so their heads and shoulders were visible. Some of them had metal shoulders, some had metal heads, many of them various kinds of generally human appearance. One of them was Kyrie.

"Now is the opportunity!" shouted the girl with dollish face and long moon-colored hair. Her big gold-colored eyes danced with mad glee as she shook one of her hands clenched into a fist. "Destroy the replicate! Destroy it! _Destroy it! _"

Down here on the ground, two huge figures then _burst _out from metal doors on the left and right sides of the alley: two cyborgs with electromechanical bodies as broad as trucks and looking strong as nuclear-powered machinery. "_Wh-rr-r, hrr-hrr-hrr..._" came sounds from their mouths—the sounds of cyborg warriors laughing. Both of them began taking steps towards the stiffly standing Sechs--who still had both arms extended outward. Unlike gladiatorial battles, their opponent here was just standing here. These ten-foot behemoths just kept walking closer. O-h-h yes, _hrr-hrr, _this was going to be _e-e-easy! _"_Hrr-hrr-hrr-hrr…!_"

The chuckling sound of the arena gladiator cyborgs was audible from up here on the roof, a dark and sadistic chuckle that seemed to resonate within Kyrie. She only wished she temporarily had a cyborg-body as so she could _smash _Sechs personally. Then the Sechs replicate moved. It turned itself ninety degrees, big robot-arms pointed left and right, pointing at the cyborg gladiators. A glaring _flash _of light was accompanied by a booming sound.

Next thing the girl knew, she was looking up at the sky through dimmed and pain-dazzled vision. There was the impression of blurry shapes of some people were leaning over her. They were saying something, their mouths moving and making for muffled sort of sounds--like trying to hear something through a windstorm. Yet the girl could not hear them as her ears were ringing. Kyrie could not hear anything but that loud ringing, could barely _see _anything after being half-blinded…

"Oh no!" exclaimed one of the twin synthetic girls. "No! Wait a second! Don't move her yet!" she said. Before even trying to move Kyrie, Vicki had to look over Kyrie to make sure that it was _safe _to move her. She used her electronic eyes and computer-mind in analyzing Kyrie's immediate physical data…

Kyrie was not trying to move. But her eyes were open, and her breath was rapid. Her otherwise pale face looked slightly reddened. A hand to a delicate wrist indicated that the girl's pulse was still strong--very strong. It was trauma resulting from flash-bang shock, the blast of light and heat from Sech's charged lightning attack down in the alley.

"What the _Hell!_" declared Vanessa from over there at the edge of this building, looking down into the alley. "_Vi-i-icki!" _she screamed, turning to look in this direction. Meanwhile, the other people atop this roof began running along this roof. "We've gotta boogie out of here! Like, that big Sechs replicate just wastedthose two great big cyborg gladiators we hired. What a _blast! _I think it's 'cause Sechs somehow stored up some of that lightning to use for a weapon or something!" Vicki still remained there, kneeling by fallen Kyrie. "_What the Hell! _Move your butt, Vicki! Grab the kid if you want! I'm carrying her stuff."

Vicki bent over to pick up Kyrie: one arm going under Kyrie's upper back, the other arm going under Kyrie's bare knees. The artificial teenage girl then repositioned her right arm in such a way that she was supporting Kyrie's head with her elbow—again keeping the girl's neck in line with her spine to minimize the probability of whiplash injury. Luckily, Kyrie was so petite a girl that she would be easier to carry, long hair curtaining down...

Meanwhile, Vanessa was nearby and unzipping her jacket before picking up Kyrie's messenger-bag. The artificial girl then looped a shoulder-strap around the front of her neck, at the base of her throat. This left the bulk of the bag falling against her back like a little backpack. If Vanessa had been human, such a thing would have led to worries of strangulation. But it wasn't a problem when one didn't have to worry about breathing. Then she put back on her leather jacket, hiding the messenger bag.

But where would they run now? Some of the people who were hired to help were running for the far-edge of this building's roof, to leap over to the next building over. Two of them didn't make the leap and fell out of sight over the edge of the building.

Holding Kyrie, the gynoid analyzed the situation. What could she do? The synthetic muscles in Vicki's legs--augmented myogel--allowed her to make amazing leaps and feats of agility. But there was the probability she would accidentally hurt Kyrie when landing on the other roof--or if they fell. The only choice was the roof access down into this building--to risk confronting the Sechs replicate-monster in the alley. That monster had also survived exposure to the artificial field-lighting setup put in place by Kyrie and her machines. "I don't know how fast I can move with her," she said.

"I don't care! Don't stand there looking dumber than usual! Come _on!_" goaded Vanessa. She then _grabbed _some of Vicki's left leather jacket-sleeve to pull. They were going to get down the stairs into the building and down to the ground floor. The plan was to run the Hell away from here, run fast and far.

They plunged down into the roof-access staircase that went into the building while rumbling and snarling sounds kept coming from the alley--seeming to shake the building. Vicki held Kyrie close while getting down the stairs as quickly as possible, biker boots thumping the stairs... It added to the general clatter of everyone else's footwear clunk-clunk-clunking down the stairs in getting out of here. _What a bother_, thought Vicki. The calf-length biker-boots worn by Vicki and her sister were sturdy, but the heels were a real annoyance--especially in trying to get down these poorly lit stairs. Vicki had to worry about not falling herself and also not dropping Kyrie.

The first floor of this building was a night club that was abandoned during daylight hours--overhead lights off, dim afternoon daylight slanting through big windows to shine on the tables. Everyone had to sidestep around tables to run for the door. "_Like hurry the Hell up already!_" complained Vanessa. She was already standing over there by the exit, hands on jeans-clad hips while everyone else had already hit the sidewalk outside and was running away. "You're moving slow as a meat-bag!"

Vicki said nothing while jogging towards the doorway and slowing down. She had to cradle Kyrie closer and walk sideways through the door--careful not to bump the girl's head on the door. In this way, she was able to get out of the night-club building.

2.

And as soon as the twins were out of there and out to the sidewalk, there was a _blast _of explosive sound from within the building. The twins were already well away and running when Sechs emerged from the smoke and dust of the entrance Sechs _growled. _It sounded something like a warning or words, but the brutal words were distorted with anger and loudness. The meaning was clear enough: Sechs wanted to _destroy_.

Vicki and Vanessa had already run three blocks' distance away by that time. They were capable of running a great deal faster than that, much faster than human and some kinds of cyborgs, but Vicki had to run while holding Kyrie. Vanessa was thinking about exactly that…

They ducked into an alley for a hot few seconds. Despite their intense and high-speed running, they were not breathing heavily at all: Being gynoids gave them unlimited running endurance. Also true was how their physiques were synthetic flesh over titanium skeletons instead of heavy metal and electromechanical workings. Yet the monstrous replicate back there probably _also _had unlimited running endurance.

Now was at least a little time to pause and analyze their situation. That, and what about Kyrie? Vicki tilted her head as so her electronic hearing could better listen to the girl's breathing and heartbeat. Her heartbeat was a little slower than human-average, but steady. Or it could be because mutant-girls had different pulse-rates. As for respiration, Kyrie's breathing had the rhythm of someone sleeping. The girl was therefore unconscious, her face still had that suntanned look to it from the blast of heat and light.

Vanessa leaned up against a wall, the strap of the messenger bag still looped across the front of her neck. The artificial teenager then crossed her arms and made eye-contact with Vicki--eyes wide open. "Let's communicate," she said.

By that, Vanessa meant that they would now communicate without using sounds--communicating their words by way of wireless infra-red communication. An array of diodes within Vanessa's eyes transmitted rapid flashes of infra-red light to Vicki's eyes, transmitting words. If someone was standing nearby, they would have seen two city girls staring at each other in an alley--stares locked, one of the girls holding a girl-child.

_We can't run with her forever, _transmitted Vanessa. _We should really dump the kid in a shop or something. Then we should go dump ourselves deeper in big ol' Scrap Town. Yeah, that big psycho Sechs won't find us there! That, or the Sechs replicate would be too distracted by meat-bags telling it to get a better taste in clothes. And did you _see _that freaky-as-Hell bodysuit? What fashion-mutant dressed the monster in that thing? _

Still locking stares with her sister, Vicki eye-transmitted a response. _Come on! Seriously, we can't do that just yet. We're too close. Isn't it bad enough that Kyrie lost her best friend to that replicate Sechs? She's fainted.. _

Vanessa would have made an eye-rolling expression if she didn't have to lock eyes with Vicki to communicate this way. _Geez, how can a meat-puppet sleep at a time like this, anyway? Okay, okay! She's knocked out cold. Good, so she won't make too much noise if we dumped her in a trash can something. And we can leave the lid off so she can breathe. Hell, a lot of humans in this city sleep in trash-cans all the time...like Oscar the Grouch!_

To that, Vicki transmitted back, _No, we'll get her back to the clinic of this neighborhood. Then we'll distract Sechs enough to follow us...before we get lost. Besides, I though you'd think it would be fun to cause a little trouble. _

_Like_ _Hell yeah, _transmitted Vanessa. _And here I was thinking that you were a spoil-sport. Maybe a little of Jamie was rubbing off on you or something? Sounds like a decent enough plan, though--heh-heh--even coming from you. _Still stare-locked, Vanessa raised her right hand to finger the messenger bag strap looped around the bottom of her neck. The weight and bulk of it was was pressed to her back beneath the synth-leather jacket--the bulk of unspent credit-chips. _I wonder how much we can swipe from this kid for payment for our services this time?_

Vicki transmitted, _If you _want _to steal from a girl while she's been knocked out, Vanessa, then I can't stop you. But at least leave enough for her to buy food and doctors... Yeah, and leave enough to pay bodyguards as so she can get back home. _

"Not again, not again..." Kyrie was murmuring, stirring in Vicki's arms. "The red circle... Closes over us all, a circle to go around..._ To go around..._" The rest of what she said was lost in incoherent mumbles. What did she mean by that?

_Kid must be dreaming about a Motorball circuit, _transmitted Vanessa. _I'm stopping communication now. _She then blinked a certain way, breaking the locking stare and the infrared transmission. Then she did a quick sort of lean to the right to look out at the sidewalk--looking back in the direction they had run from. Sechs wasn't in sight. Still... "Okay, let's go," she said, using her voice.

That said, the twins stepped out of the alleyway, one of them carrying Kyrie. They looked left and right. There seemed to be no immediate sign of pursuit of Sechs. In fact, there seemed to not be anyone else around... There was just Vicki and Vanessa stepping along this sidewalk--going along. This late in the day, sunlight taking on the gold-yellow tones before sunset, Tire-Wire Alley was usually getting to be pretty busy as people around the sports industry went off to the nearest Motorball arena deeper within Scrap Iron City. It was getting to be just around that time. But this time, there was _no one._ There was just the sound of the city breeze blowing along.

"Where the Hell did all the flesh-brained losers go?" commented Vanessa aloud. "Hmm... Hah-hah! Maybe that Sechs replicate killed 'em all. It must have done a pretty neat job at it, too. I don't see _any _blood or body parts--metal or meat. If Sechs _did _do everyone, it must've been pretty cool to watch, too... Big fists going _swoosh _and all of those fleshies going _splat.. _Body parts would be _everywhere!_"

"Stop it! You're scaring me..." responded Vicki. "And like, Sechs could be around here right now. The wind is in my ears and my audio sensitivity is reduced." Indeed, the wind was _how-w-wling _at this point. "Who knows where it is?"

Two things happened. A curly haired man in red tee shirt and beige slacks stepped out from a shop along this sidewalk--stepping onto this sidewalk. The way he had his left arm close to his abdomen, he seemed to be injured. He was using his right arm and was beckoning to them--making a _come over here _gesture with his right arm. As for the second thing, it was..._a familiar grow-w-wling sound that shook the air. _Oh yeah, the Sechs replicate was not too far off now!

_Come over here, _came the gesture again That man over there turned around to walk back towards the store-front from which he stepped out of. There was also the _clomp-clomp-clomp _sound of a very murderous and very nasty replicate on the way over here. Vicki held Kyrie closer and ran with Vanessa. As fast as Vicki and Vanessa ran, it seemed as if they were moving too slow to catch that injured man. And it was as if the replicate coming at them was getting closer.

_Clomp-clomp-CLOMP-CLOMP!_ It was as if Sechs was almost right here. Those gigantic armored footsteps were getting _louder _and seemed to be overwhelming even the sound of the breeze--big booming steps like that of earth-quaking pounding-sounds of bombardment. Just a few more strides and they would be in. _Come over here..._ The injured man stood by an open doorway into the shop and walked in--disappearing into the darkness within. Vanessa _slapped_ open the front door wider and dashed in herself. Vicki followed close behind with Kyrie. Then..._everything plunged into a sick and numbing sort of darkness.._for just a second

Somehow, there was this place--a dimly lit club. At the far end of the room was a brightly lit raised stage... There was an old-fashioned jazz band on the stage and looking ready to play--all of the men dressed in sun-yellow tuxedo-jackets and pants. One of them was sitting behind an old-fashioned drum-set, another had a big cello between his knees where he sat. A third tuxedo-wearing man had a gleaming, shiny saxophone balanced on his knees. The fourth was sitting at the far right and at a piano. The fifth man in sun-colored tuxedo was standing at the microphone.

"What is this?" asked Kyrie. The girl herself was sitting at one of the tables in the darkness before the stage. There were maybe a dozen tables a person could barely see in the low indirect glow of the stage spotlight.

Then again, Kyrie's eyesight was not like that of most people. The girl had no problem in adjusting to the gloom: The pupils of her unusually large eyes simply widened to adjust. Being a slight mutant had at least some advantages. Even so, while most everything else was easier to see now, it was as if she could...barely see...the strange man sitting at this table. It was as if he was a gray shadowy blur... "I ask, who are you?" she voiced aloud. "I demand answers!"

"_Mwe-heh..._ _Ach! _Ach-hem! So the pretty little girl wants a big ugly answer?" asked the strange man. He was keeping his voice was low, as if struggling to speak through the pain of injuries--the cough sounding wet with blood trickling into lungs. Or it could be that he was trying not to disturb the sacred quietness of this place. "Well now, I could tell you one thing, then have to tell it to you again...and again... This isn't the first time around. You just can't remember to remember around this time..."

"You speak of nonsense," said the girl. "I have no such recollection of ever having 'remembered' anything of this place or of _you. _Scrap Iron City has its fair share of clubs, shops and such. Yet this place must certainly be different from many of them. I would certainly have remembered it."

There was a slight blur of movement in the general area of the strange man's head; he must have shaken his head _no. _"So we come and go with the same line of conversations. Will it never end to come to an end? Time and time again makes for repetition... _Ach-achem! _Tell me, what do you know of the workings of karma? What should happen if something was to happen to that in particular?"

_Karma, _thought Kyrie. The girl knew something of karma--something occasionally come across in technical books read. Except those were side-bars and miscellaneous articles. Kyrie's knowledge was primarily on the technical workings and scientific bases of machine technology, not vague cosmology. "There is no time for this, nor do I have the patience for it," restated the girl, looking around for Vicki and Vanessa.

Where _were _they? There was the chance that this strange man meant her harm. Most people of Scrap Iron City were friendly, though a bit tired and downtrodden from the daily efforts of working factory work and eating meager meals. There were _crazies..._ The way this strange man was talking, he could be one such _crazy._ He could want to kill her. In that case, perhaps she should not make any sudden moves and go with his peculiar talk.

"You look around and round for...Vicki and Vanessa?" asked the strange man. "_Erg-ach-h-h! Ach-hem! _They are waiting for you again. Likewise, the band is waiting to play again. Your girlfriend Sieben? Oh yes, that one waits for you again as well."

"How do you come to say such things?" blurted Kyrie before she could stop herself. For him to know the names of Vicki and Vanessa, that was easy. Maybe he knew the twins from elsewhere. But about Sieben, there was no immediate way that this strange man could come to know _her _Sieben. And for him to speak on such familiar terms about her...!

"Look and listen," added the strange man. "We've been here once, twice, too many times before... _Ach-achem! _What goes around, comes around. Sometimes it's around more than another round. When I asked you about what happens when something happens to karma itself, it was an honest question. Even I don't know. But we'll all find out again. By the byway, to introduce myself, I'm Jack Bent."

The backwardness and strangeness of all this was both annoying and unsettling to Kyrie. Except there...was soon no time to worry about that. Someone stepped onto the stage, holding a box. There was..._an intense glare...of light that overcame everything. Kyrie could not even blink or close her eyes because...the intense white-hot glare burned away everything, even herself. There was just a moment of white-hot pain, not even enough time to scream--a scream lost in the glare..._

_Then came a darkness that was just as dark as the exploding glare had been white, a place opposite. There was the vague idea of lying on something or being leaned on something at an angle. A spotlight shone down from somewhere above in the darkness... A blurry, smeared figure with a wild head of flaming gray stood over. Fwe-e-e-e-e...! _

_It was that sound again. That was the Hellishly awful sound of a little electric saw spinning--a saw with a blur-spinning circular blade the size of a coin. The sound was most certainly coming from what was held in the figure's right arm. It was coming closer. If the sound of the turbo-spinning little blade was awful, then the sound of it...biting into the skull...was...worse... The blade squealed as the turbo-spinning action began to cut into bone, going whe-e-e-e...! Everything seemed to fade... _


	7. Chapter 7

_A Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 7--_The Second Rotation_

1.

_It had to be the most freak-twisted dreams he had ever been in. He was in a dark place, at a table, a shadow of a stranger sitting across from him. The stranger was giving him a headache. This place, it was familiar somehow. The same was true for this blurred figure of a stranger. _

_And there were the sounds... Outside the walls of this dark place came mewling sounds of agony. That was mixed with the sound of strange machines in the floors--machines that were somehow very important to this place. The machines were there because he could feel the vibration of them through the floor. Just as electric heaters provide heat, the strange machines were doing something else to this place. Maybe they were generating electricity? They were generators or something. No, it was more important than that. Those machines in the floor, he had the idea that they were doing something to reality itself--maybe keeping out the creatures that made those Hellish sounds outside the walls. Then came a burning white-hot light. _

_He was on a table and looking up at darkness. Those voices that once moaned with pain, they were starting to laugh. They were laughing while a white-clad blurry figure stepped over to here and held up a familiar surgical tool. _

_It was a little circular saw at the end of a foot-long metal tube. When it was turned on, the turbo-spinning circular saw made a sound like a minor demon's prolonged squeal of joy. That sound was worse when it began to when it began to cut open his skull—going bwe-e-e-e-e-e…!_

_What made him wake up…_was an awful, terrible headache. "Awp..." exclaimed the man, the gasp of a sound coming out of his mouth. He had been lying next to an old factory machine built into the floor. The floor was very solid and real beneath him—a gritty and dirty floor. The grit was a combination of dried machine-oil residues, powdered rust, and all sorts of chemical stuff from long ago. Some of the grit was likely toxic, just as lightly contaminated as most everything in the city.

Lying there, he was a figure of average size and moderate physical build. His red tee-shirt and dust-colored slacks hid most of his lean musculature and made him seem thinner than he was. But even if he was physically stronger, it would not have mattered much: In a world of machine-bodied cyborg people and machines the sizes of buildings, flesh is weak.

There were machines all around in this big old place. They had been quiet for a very long time, over a hundred years, maybe. They were...old Factory machines that no one in Scrap Iron City knew how to work anymore. The Factory tried to use those machines as well instead of just letting them sit there. Except the machines could not be used because no one knew how. And attempts to take the machines apart only resulted in the leakage of a glowing red substance that caused many humans and cyborgs to become sick and insane with severe radiation poisoning--killing them quickly. Since then, no one was supposed to be in a place like this.

Except here he was—a curly haired man left unconscious in this place of sleeping and strange machines that made people sick and crazy with radiation years ago. Now he was sitting up and trying to remember what the _Hell he was doing here. _And why was his head aching so? As he further shook himself into an awakened state, the ache in his head…_became pain! The headache was so bad that his vision became blurred… "Awp... Aw... A-a-a-h-h-h-h...!"_

He hopped to his feet and clutched at his skull! It hurt! It hurt too much and hurt _like Hell! _For a second, he could not see at all out of his left eyeball. It was like trying to see through a shattered camera lens. His left arm went numb. And that _pain just kept splitting his skull! _

His...whole freakin' head felt as if somebody really did cut it open to r-r-rip out his brain, do something to it, then plop it back in his skull in without caring too much about seemingly little things like neural connections, blood vessels and the like. He was in so much pain that he couldn't even see three feet in front of himself. _A-h-h-h..! _

All this time, there were two cyborgs standing next to one of the machines, and watched this spectacle of the screaming, staggering man who had just awakened. "Yo, man!" commented a wide-bodied male cyborg--one dressed in slacks and shiny vest, a vest that left his electromechanical arms exposed. "Cool out for just a second!" He put up both metal hands. "Else, we can _make _you calm!"

"Hold off," commented the second one here. Unlike his partner, he was more nattily dressed for business: dark business jacket over white-buttoned shirt, with pressed pants and shiny dark shoes. Atop his bald round head was a black fedora hat. Flesh-colored gloves completed the outfit. From neck to feet, all body-metal was covered--only exposing a pale and plastic-looking face. "The man's in pain. Maybe we won't have to rough the joker up after all."

"Screw it! I _want _to rough him up," countered the first cyborg. "He deserves it for slacking on an important job! One of our own decides to slack on a job, and we have to do something about it. It's the rules." He flexed his electromechanical arms. "I love those rules..."

These two cyborgs were standing here the entire time--even if Jack Bent was unable to notice that immediately. It was just that the man was _in so much head-splitting pain _that it was hard for him to see or hear anything. All that he could do was clutch his head, twist around in a mad dance of agony and _scre-e-eam!_

"You think I should hit him to shut him up?" asked the metal-armed cyborg-man, the one wearing the shiny vest and casual slacks. He waited until the curly haired man finished another scream before he spoke again. "How's the joker supposed to listen if he's too busy screamin' his head off?"

_A-aha-hi-i-agh...! _There was another pause in the howling agony--enough pause for the one in the business suit to respond. "Damn fleshies! It's probably stuff in the drinking water, messing up their brains sometimes," commented the nattily dressed cyborg in business clothes. He waited for another scream to die down. "A human body can't deal with all the stuff that sometimes gets in Scrap Town's water... Zalem doesn't exactly care, know what I'm saying?"

_Aha-aiaa-a-a! _"That's it! I'm shuttin' him up," said the cyborg wearing the vest and casual slacks. He walked over to where the curly haired man stood writhing in almost psychotic pain. Then the cyborg wrapped his electromechanical arms around the man in a gigantic machine-hard bear-hug move. The man in pain squirmed a moment more...

Then he calmed, catching his breath--or trying to catch his breath in the two-armed grip. Though squinting, the curly haired man seemed to be in a more coherent state of mind now. "_Wha... What the Hell?_" he gasped. He looked around at the industrial surroundings. Then he looked at the cyborg in the business suit. "_Where'd I just go? And you...?_"

"Forget about who we are," said the cyborg in the business suit, the one with a plastic sort of face. "You ought to concern yourself with what we've got to say. We're just messengers, see. From where do we get our message? It comes from a place on high--if you know what I mean." The cyborg in business suit stepped closer and crossed his arms. He was actually slightly shorter than the curly haired man.

The cyborg-man in the black vest squeezed Jack Bent a little harder. "Hee-hee..." he chuckled. Jack Bent seldom actually ever heard anyone _really _say _hee-hee. _But that was exactly how the cyborg giggled. _Hee-hee...! _

"Jack Bent," said the cyborg-man in business suit, "your _boss _thinks that you're slacking on the job! She said you were supposed to _get _a mutant from the Scrapyard lands, get 'em quietly and send 'em up to Zalem without a fuss. And you _didn't! _We don't see why you're slackin' on this job, since all you've gotta do is bag a _mutant!_ A mutant... It's not even human. Jeez, how hard can it be, gettin' the thing and sendin' it dead up a tube? Slag 'em, bag 'em, and tag 'em for that city up in the sky! You've done that before…

"Anyway, we don't care about your freakin' excuses! All we care about is _reminding _you of what you've got to do! When someone like one of those rich folks from Zalem says you _do _something, you _do _it!"

"_Hee-hee...!_" commented the cyborg who had metal arms around Jack Bent's chest. "Yeah, Jack, you _do _it..." For emphasis, the cyborg squeezed some more. It would not have taken a lot of effort for him to crush a human's chest. What he really wanted to do was just _squee-e-eze _a little. A little more, and maybe some of Jack Bent's ribs would crack.

"_N-n-nngh... Agh!_" yelled Jack Bent. "I'm…working on it! Kidnapping her won't be...easy… _Nn-nggh... The girl has a bodyguard!_" That was all he could get out before the constriction became too hard. As his chest was being squeezed, the pressure was getting up to his head. It was not as bad as the now-faded headache. But it was getting..._to be bad... Bwe-e-e-e, went the sound of a saw... _

He must have blacked out for a second, because he did not remember falling to the gritty industrial floor again. Now to go with the headache was his chest hurting and full of pain It was hard to breathe. He crossed his own arms around his chest and flopped onto his back to try and breathe easier. But he dare not try to stand up again with those two standing by.

_Thump! _The one in the business suit kicked Jack just enough to add to the hurt. "Come on, now! That sounds like one of those _excuses _I told you to stay off of! You ought to be able to deal with one cyborg bodyguard! You can deal with _us, _can't you? Heh-heh..."

"_Uh-h-h-hp-p!_" Jack Bent tried to say something but only found himself sucking for air. His chest still ached from the compression. "You... _Ach...! _You don't understand. That... _Uh-h-h-p..! _The girl's bodyguard..._uh-h-h-h-h-p..._is a replicate. She's..._uh-h-h-p..._a GR model...darn it! _Sieben..._ _U-h-h-h-p! GR! Do you...know what…that…that means! Uh-h-h-h-hp!_"

The cyborg in the business clothes put on a phony look of wide-eyed shock, slapping both his hands to the sides of his face. So posed, he resembled a cartoon drawing of exaggerated surprise--especially since his plastics-made face was as smooth as a drawing. "Oh my stars! Are you talking about Sieben? Are we supposed to be afraid of some cyber-chick named after a number? _Whoo-hoo! _I'm scared! I'm quaking in my fashionable footwear, guy!"

To that, the cyborg with bare metal arms added, "Yeah... We know all about that mutant-brat's sexy replicate-friend. Her brain-chip and body were copied or something from some TUNED agent out of Zalem.. Hmmph, Sieben… _Sie-e-eben... _I wouldn't mind meeting _her _in a dark alley! Us two alone…"

"Yech! Get off it!" exclaimed the other cyborg. "That _Sieben _doll ain't even a real person. She's a complete robot. I don't mind a fellow cyborg. But making out with a _replicate? _It'd be like making out with a freakin' mannequin!"

"Hey, don't knock it," countered the cyborg with bare metal arms. "She's got a good-looking body! That's enough for me. I just call 'em as I see 'em. At least it's not like that _other _replicate in town. Sechs, _yech!_"

"_Uh-h-h-hp...!_" gasped Jack Bent. "I hate to..._u-h-h-h-p..._break it to you. From what I've seen..._uh-h-hp, _she's not interested in boys. Know what I mean? _Uh-h-hp! _Sieben..._u-h-h-hp..._is not...on the market...for a date..."

"Wa-hey-y-y!" exclaimed the cyborg with bare metal arms. "That's _hot! _It makes me want her even more. Sometimes, Jack, you're an okay sort of guy. Maybe we _won't _have to kill you after all. Or at least we'll make it quick if you don't come through. Thanks for telling!"

"_Uh-h-h-hp! _You...know me, pal!" gasped Jack Bent, his head tilted towards the floor. "I'm...always telling people..._uh-h-hp..._what they want to know...even if...they don't know they want it yet! _Uh-h-h-h-p-p...!_ Who knows..._u-h-h-hp! _Maybe she won't mind a little stupid-headed companionship every so often."

_Thump! _That was the sound of Jack Bent being _kicked _by the cyborg-man in the shiny vest. "Now look what you've made me do! You should've quit while you were still making sense. So please shut up, before I have to hurt you...some more."

"_Uh-h-h-p...! _" Despite his pain, chest and left arm, Jack Bent managed to smile up at the two cyborgs standing over him. "You must get off on hurting men. Hell, maybe you and Sechs could get together and talk about that sort of thing."

The cyborg with bare metal arms crouched down, then put a poking metal finger close to Jack Bent's face. "_You...!_ No, I'm not even gonna honor that comment. You've heard what we have to say. And if you hear it again, you won't be even in good enough health to do what you're told."

"_Hee-hee-hee...! _Good one!" added the cyborg in the business suit. He looked down at Jack Bent. "Now if you don't mind, we've got other business to handle besides yourself. You'll be seeing us around if you don't come through for Miss Aidas."

"I've already seen..._uh-h-h-p-p_...you around," said Jack Bent. "_Heh-heh... _And I've seen you around and around again. _Uh-h-hp...! Heh-heh..._" Then his eyes rolled up in his head as he blacked out again, head _thudding _on the floor.

2.

Perhaps half an hour later or so, Jack Bent staggered out a back door of the abandoned Factory building. _"Gyach..._" he exclaimed as the bright golden sunlight glared his eyes for a moment and made him go lean up against a building wall. Just because he was on his feet did not mean that he was feeling too much better. Those two hired thugs had their run of him with their fists, arms and feet. He had enough experience as a hard-core street thug to not make a big fuss about it. Those two were just doing their job. It was just that this time their job was _him. _Who knows? Maybe their next job was saving a neighborhood kid from a Deckman recruitment building.

He tried standing away from the building--nearly fell over. One thing about serious injuries was how they did not hurt a great deal at first: shock and adrenaline kept a person from realizing the pain. Maybe a person blacks out... The pain comes later--_later_ meaning _now_ for Jack Bent. All the pain in his body from that "discussion" with those two cyborgs was pain going up to his head. Consequently, his head hurt like a private, single-player version of Hell--if there was a Hell. Or maybe this was some kind of Hell--this too-hot city surrounded by desert?

Nope, nope, nope... There was no use in just leaning up against this wall and feeling pathetic. He had to get right to his job of pretending to do his current job. And the best way to do--or not do--that sort of thing was to start walking around and talking to people in a show of "investigation." Before that, some liquid anesthetic would do nicely.

He sucked in some air when an extra twinge of pain yanked inside of his chest--dizzying him for a moment. This part of Scrap Iron City was just a few blocks over from Tire-Wire Alley, that somewhat friendly neighborhood In this neighborhood of Scrap-Iron City, Tire-Wire Alley There was the medical clinic for humans like himself when it came to injuries. Not that clinic. Nah, the "clinic" he had in mind offered quicker medicine.

Jack Bent stepped out from the bright city day, coming into this place. This was the _Red Circle _pub. Or that was at least the official name. He limped his way beyond the big wood-paneled doors that flapped behind him. Wood, those doors were _real wood. _How or where the owner of this place found real _wood_ was a mystery to Jack Bent. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen real trees. Or did he ever see real trees? Well, they'd been extinct in this part of the land for centuries--unless they had trees up in that big stupid floating city. What mattered to Jack was how the big wooden doors of the _Red Circle _bar were a welcome sight whenever he needed to rejuvenate.

He made his way towards the drinking bar...where a red-haired, graceful female bartender was pouring a drink—a female with classic good looks. She had a round face with high cheeks, a smooth complexion—her face framed with red hair, a head of hair that seemed to glow the color of blood in the overhead incandescent lighting. Her skin was so beautiful that it seemed to have a faint glow to it. And the open-necked blouse she had on showed more of her skin. Her tight black pants clung to the hips and thighs, beautiful legs that were—unfortunately—hidden behind the drinking bar. Over the white blouse was a short black vest. Though beautiful and young-looking, the female bartender's clothing looked so very old-fashioned—like a girl borrowing great-grandmother's clothes.

Jack Bent thought the contrast was beautiful… All the same, he had to _carefully_ sit himself a seat atop a bar-stool, leaned over, raised a finger--signaling for a simple beer to start. The female bartender gave a questioning look. "Don't mind me... I'm just coming back from a business meeting," he said to the beautiful female bartender. "Some of my ah..._associates _gave me a peer review. _Ach..._"

"Aye. 'Tis more of the same, once more," she responded. Her accent was as rare as her hair color. All kinds of accents played out in Scrap Iron City. It was just that this accent wan't too common nowadays. But Jack Bent understood what she was saying. "_Ehm-m-m_... Time to time, methinks it may be necessary for ye to reconsider career options. And time to time, 'tis reconsideration in the form o' blows to th' body. Ye ken my words? The notion o' things havin' a way o' comin' back again...and again? 'Tis not th' first time this came to pass." She looked towards the door, a far-off look in her eyes. "Again...and again..."

"_Hmmph..._" grunted Jack Bent, the expression a combination of not bothering to say anything quickly and a twinge of pain in the chest. A hit of the beer alleviated some of the pain outright. Maybe some ribs were cracked. Alcohol was anesthetic, after all—even if wasn't supposed to be too good for your health…

Putting down the beer, leaning against the bar, he added, "You know, most bartenders don't care so much about what we do. That bald guy who ran this place before you, he didn't care what customers looked like, staggering in here or not. Hey, where'd he go, anyway? He's been running this place for years."

"Eh?" asked the female bartender. "Did ye take a bludgeon to th' noggin? Th' _Red Circle_ been in my family's ownership since th' first foul machine-smelling winds carried th' first reeks o' construction for Scrap Iron City. Never been any bald lads runnin' this place. Unless ye mean reference to some other cycle. Th' accursed inverted karma, it'd done made a mess o' everythin'!"

That word _karma _caught something in Jack Bent's mind. Suddenly the alcohol-dulled pains and dizziness went away. "Hey, keep talking! What do you mean by that? I've heard talk like that before... It was somewhere _really_ important."

To that, the female bartender just smiled. "Nay, bucko. 'Tis not for ye to ken outright. If ye did, it'd be for naught in the end--the end takin' more than a passin' resemblance to th' beginnin'." She tilted her head sympathetically to a side, gravity making some lengths of her red hair go aside to more of her right cheek—adding a forlorn look to her beauty. "Enjoy th' moment while ye may, every time ye can. Have another sip o' brew..."

"Okay," said Jack Bent while maintaining eye-contact. He just couldn't stop looking at her. She was just too beautiful--a beautiful woman with a beautiful physique clad in leggings and close-fitting vest, a beautiful face to go with it—a head of wonderful red hair. And her _eyes... Those big sky-blue eyes of cut-crystal beauty took him in for just a second... _"What was I just talking about?" he asked aloud. Really, Jack Bent just forgot what he was talking about. And just maybe he forgot how he stepped into this bar.

"Think naught o' th' problem," commented the female bartender. "Ye got cyborg problems along with th' bigger one. Like th' wee lass ye've been hired to abduct. 'Tis a tragedy waitin' to happen again...and again..."

"The other bartender once made a comment on me about my job once, too," said Jack Bent. "Once, he made that comment, and that was it. To _that, _all I can say is how everybody has to do his or her job--even if it feels as wrong as rivers flowing the wrong way... Right now, my job is making me feel as bad as a box of rotten oatmeal thrown into a barrel of radioactive waste."

"Aye? Then _why_ do ye do it, laddy boy Ye've got a _brain, _do ye not? Ye would be needin' to use what ye have. Ye done chosen to enter this drinkin' establishment just now, did ye not? Ye did."

Jack Bent shook his head. He was feeling well enough to do that, at least. "I can only do what I do," he said. "It's all I _can _do. It's my job. People wake up, do what they do for a living, then they spend the nights forgetting about what they do to earn money. They stagger over to bars to get piss-drunk at places like this. Or they go to the Motorball Arena to get mad-crazy. Like what it says on the expensive shampoo bottles that get dumped from Zalem: Wash, rinse, repeat..."

"Aye, but do ye need to use _one _brand o' shampoo?" asked the female bartender. She put her right hand on the drinking bar, left hand on a black-clad hip. "Jack, me friend, _this_ would be how I see it. 'Tis like th' Motorball game so many o' th' folks hereabouts love so dearly. What happens? Th' ball gets flounced upon th' court at first. Then th' metal-bodied blokes and ladies do a mad dash to get th' bloody thing round the course. Lots o' them blokes and ladies get obliterated, maybe killed. And eventually, th' ball gets 'round to th' finish." This beautiful female bartender paused. "Then th' metal-bodied blokes and ladies go 'round an' round some more. Ye done got yeself into a Motorball circuit, bucko. Do ye ken how many times ye'll go 'round ye life before ye end up wrecked?"

"I don't know that," said Jack Bent. He leaned closer to the bar counter. "I don't know if real life really is like a Motorball circuit, going around...to go around...to go around... All that people like me can think about is the reward around the corner and staying alive until we can reach it."

"But do ye realize that th' goal means killin' an' maybe _bein' _killed?" asked the female bartender. Her voice became a little sad. "Methinks 'tis th' curse o' this broken land, th' broken people. Ye poor, broken people, _hurtin'_ an' _killin'_ one another an' doin' those horrible, _horrible_ things."

"We have to do what we have to do, again and again--to live," said Jack Bent, thinking about the cyborg-thugs who make him _not _alive for not completing this latest job. "If we don't, then somebody else will come along who can do the deeds--and maybe kill us. It's me or someone else who dies. I don't particularly feel like dying any time soon..."'

"Or _she _dies," added the female bartender. "She's but a wee bonny lass. 'Tis it not wrong enough her father done up an' left her? 'Tis it not wrong enough that ye've been hired to send 'er and send 'er up to Zalem to be _murdered? _Do ye _like_ to murdersweet an' innocent lasses while they'd be smilin' and laughin', enjoyin' their lives while possible...?"

"_Hey!_ _You shut the Hell up!" _screamed Jack Bent. The female bartender smirked, knowing that she touched an emotional soft-spot and making the man lose his cool. There was silence for a little while--silence accompanied by the sound of wind. "Okay, sorry about that," resumed Jack Bent. "You're only telling things from...your point-of-view and don't know about the way we have to live. Wait a second... How do you know anything about what's been happening? I've been around this part of Scrap Iron City for years and know all the faces. Doing the jobs I do, knowing people is important. But I've never seen yours before, would've remembered you. Who are you?"

"Maybe 'tis the wrong line o' questions, maybe," countered the female bartender, a light hint of amused smile on her lips. Maybe, 'tis a question of who ye _think _ye are. Besides, 'tis also the responsibility of a barkeep to ken the doings of people hereabouts. We barkeepers can _listen_. People talk."

_Yeah, that's it, _thought Jack Bent. The bartender must have heard people talking--hearing rumors. Otherwise there'd be no real way this red-haired bartender-lady could ever know about what was going on. Too many of his colleagues must have said too much. As he thought this, the female bartender was staring at him with those sky-colored eyes of hers--staring into his mind...

_No, that's just crazy, _he thought. But he _was _feeling a bit nervous. He finished off the beer with a few gulps, glanced back at the price-board, then reached into his right pocket to get out a credit-chip worth twice the posted price of the beer. "Keep the change," he said before quickly getting off of the barstool to walk out of here.

He was actually at the door, had his hand on the bronze push-plate, when the beautiful bartender spoke up from back there at the bar. It was something that he _really _wished she did not. Hearing the question actually made him feel a little more sick.

"Did ye have a _terrible _dream last night? Methinks, 'twas a dream o' ye bein' in a _strange, dark _place. Ye would've been with th' lass. Then th' terrible disaster happened. A _terrible _thing, science can be at times..."

At this point, there was an increase in that awful, terrible feeling in Jack's gut--and it had almost nothing to do with the beating he'd taken earlier. Somewhere at the back of his mind was the realization that, yes, he _did _have a dream exactly as described by the bartender back there. It seemed so real... But it was just a dream--one of those _so-real-they-scare-you-to-Hell_ kind of dreams. That was all it was.

"_Dreams are just dreams_," he muttered. But he did not have the courage to say it too loudly. With that in mind, he quickly got out of here before the female bartender pulled any more mind-twisting questions on him. And only after he left the bar did Jack Bent realize that--after the visit to that particular bar--all of the pain of his injuries were completely gone--as were the injuries themselves.


	8. Chapter 8

_A Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 8—The Pains of Somebody Else

…

1.

Healed though he was, he was still hot and dirty. The physical recovery given to him now made him aware of his slovenly and weak condition. It was getting to be late in the afternoon, and Jack Bent hadn't washed himself up yet—grimy since yesterday. Or for that matter, he hadn't washed these clothes in days. His shirt was taking on a sticky feeling after having long since beginning to smell, and his slacks were no longer so slack in that they were becoming oily and thick with dirt and grime. The last foew days of hot afternoon sweat were soaked in with the grimy clothes, moist sweat mixed with the slightly toxic air pollution. Sweat plus toxic air pollution made for clothes that ought not be worn for too long. Really, having to worry about being clean and eating...and feeling sick... Being human sucks.

Getting clean costs money. Jack Bent visited one of his cash caches in the abandoned industrial area at the edge of Tire-Wire Alley--a fenced-off and abandoned area said to be full of mutants--grotesque and deformed once-humans whose skin and bodies were made deformed because of the toxicity in bad water supplies. Or maybe it was secretly home to hoards of biting rats lousy with diseases and chemical contamination in their blood--so that when they bit humans, they caused limbs to rot off the body. He needed to get some more money from his cache.

He went beyond the fence to enter the big and abandoned industrial area, then made a quick jog towards one building in particular on the left--his sneakers padding along the hard hot pavement of the cracked parking lot. His jogging them brought him 'round back of that one big building. Consequently, this side of the building actually faced away from Tire-Wire Alley--facing the wide stretch of flat and wasted land. Beyond that was a horizon of the Scrapyard--those fields and hills made of metal junk. Now out there,_ that _was where there were mutants. This curly haired man then went into the building.

It was another abandoned Factory building—one of many in this border-neighborhood. Sunlight slanted through the grimed over windows. Well, that light was _trying _to shine through the layer of grit on the windows--barely shining into this empty place of metal machines in the big indoor space, machines that had gone silent maybe decades ago. _Those windows are about as in good condition as I am, _thought Jack Bent.

At least it made for some light by which he could see. He walked slowly and carefully through the gloom, slowing down in places where there was not much light at all, where he had to carefully step over some pieces of metal junk and even a few human skeletons. Who knows, maybe those rumored rats or mutants had themselves a feast? Not only was he being careful about tripping just for the sake of convenience, he was extra sure to avoid falling here because of the pain it could cause later. Trip and fall here, and maybe he could catch any number of diseases or infections. And that would not be good.

Jack Bent remembered something that happened a while back. He once tripped (not _that _kind of tripped) and fell--scraping his elbow on the concrete of a particularly hot city afternoon. The scrape was soon quickly infected with all kinds of pollution-strengthened germs, and then it was contaminated with the toxic substances in the grit...and in the air. By the end of the day, it made the entire arm swell--a painful fever coming with it.

He had a fever for about a week. A clinic worker said that it was a common occurrence among those who still had real human bodies--people derisively known as "fleshies." Said the clinic worker, it was actually contamination from some chemicals. And maybe, Jack Bent might not ever fully recover, said the clinic worker. But the young man did recover after an expensive day of paying for pills that seemed to make him feel as sick as the contaminating chemicals that infiltrated his bloodstream. So it was best to not do something as stupid as getting injured here, cut or scratched.

He was still stepping through the gloom. _One, two, three... _The man mentally counted over five machines to the left--some kind of gigantic engine-thing with pipes that went down into the floor. He reached into the dark metal recesses of the big industrial engine with vague worries of some hideous slime-skinned mutant-creature inside of the machine _grabbing his wrist _and chewing his arm off. Then there was the idea of some rats made poisonous by living in places where there were small puddles of toxic waste that leaked up from the ground--those rats maybe making this dark abandoned place their home. His left arm was still in the dark machine up to the elbow. Where the _Hell _was it?

He found it and quickly _pulled_. _Clinkety...! _It was a cloth sack filled with credits--one of his caches. Sitting with back leaning against the machine, he drop-plopped the greasy sack onto the floor and untied the top. He then reached in to get at the credit chips. A handful of credits in his left pocket would do--still plenty left over. That done, he re-tied the sack and dropped it back into the machine. Then he would quickly get right back out of here--his left arm and tee-shirt stained in places with strange green grease from the machine that stung a little. Daylight waited outside.

He would now go for a very long and distracting walk today along the main street of Tire-Wire Alley. That was what he would do--instead of what he was _supposed _to do. Full-flesh humans normally did not make it a habit of going for long and leisurely strolls during afternoons--as it was usually hot as Hell this time of year when the sun was way up high and glaring full down. Long ago, before Scrap Iron City, this land was desert and _felt _like it. Hot air, hot city streets, it was just getting so darned _hot_...

It was always so _hot _around here during this time of the year. He was feeling lazy and had a sort of loose rhythm to his walk as he went along this urban sidewalk--no shade. That hot sun burned down from high in the sky, sunlight burning through the haze of slightly beige-colored air pollution from the Factory buildings and machines all throughout nearby Scrap Iron City. No matter how long Jack Bent lived around here, he was _never _used to the weather of this place--weather that was both boring and maddening at the same time. It was too freakin' _hot. _

Nowhe was _really _feeling it. That sun was burning down on him--the air heating him up. Along this side of the street, the short buildings of this neighborhood were giving him _no _darned shade--_especially _since it was that time of day when sunlight shines almost straight down onto everything, onto your head and makes your life more of a Hell than it is. How the _heck _could other fleshies put up with this heat..._every...single...day!_ No wonder most people decided to give up bodies in relatively good health and just become cyborgs at some point in their life, a life in a place of jumbled machine-buildings and cyborg machine-people all existing in air that was so darned polluted that it killed off most all the flying animals called "birds." He just kept walking with his two hot shoes-covered feet on the _hot _hardconcrete sidewalk while his head was feeling angry and heated from having to always put up with this _hot...ridiculous...weather! _Damn it all to Hell and death! It was no wonder why some ancient religions had a hot place called "Hell." This must be close to what it feels like! Then there was how the nights were always so cold that toes and hands went numb even _if _a person wore gloves. _A-ach! _

_ "_It's _so hot!_" Hell yeah, Jack Bent was losing his freakin' mind--putting up with all of this afternoon-time _hotness _and _humidity _all mixed up with chemical-pollution from machine-buildings while metal-bodied cyborgs walked along hard concrete streets made hazy and wavy because of the hotness of the air--while everything just burned redder and hotter... Jack Bent stopped walking, tilted back his head and _screa-a-amed his pain... "A-i-a-aia-i-a-a-aag-g-gh-h-h!_"

_A person would suppose that Jack Bent would be used to this pain. But a person can't get used to this. It was a screamed agony of_..._pain and suffering to the hot sky above this Hellishly hot city--a city of an industrial nightmare! He just couldn't take it any freakin' longer! And as he screamed, the metal-bodied machine people just kept walking by, the truck-machines rumbled on by along the street, the machine-buildings still steadily chuffing out air pollution up to the hot sky with the uncaring sun overhead...! His scream of agony and pain overwhelmed him_. _Then he blacked out for what was the third time today._

Time passed into later afternoon. Sunlight was now slanted as so some of it was blocked by the concrete buildings--casting this side of the street in shadows. He was lying on the sidewalk next to the alley. People kept walking by... That man in grimy tee shirt and greasy pants must be a drug addict or something. Drug addicts--be those drugs alcoholic, narcotic, or otherwise--were always passed out around here. Also true was how most people did not really have places to live, though most were able to find unused places to sleep--like abandoned industrial basements or room-like nooks in the sewer system so clogged that they remained dry. So what? A lot of people were homeless. The thing to do was walk by and ignore them. In Jack Bent's case, the perception of him being just another impoverished druggie kept people from digging around in his greasy pants or turning him over to get at the little sack of money he was lying on.

Except one such passer-by did not ignore the wretch on the sidewalk. It was a wild-haired visitor with huge metal machine-arms and scratched synthetic face--a visitor that drew occasional worried stares. The visitor gave a nudge with an armored boot. When the man just stirred, the visitor next nudge had the hint of a kick in it.

"_Ahh!_" yelled Jack Bent, suddenly sitting up. He was clutching his left shoulder where he'd been booted. Then he wriggled around as so he could sit up against the building and look around while his sleep-confused mind was still getting oriented. Then he looked up at the scratched synthetic face of the Sechs replicate. "Hey, why'd you wake me up! I was having a really good dream!" he exclaimed. "It was _wonderful... _There was this nice and cool-weather place with a great big field--covered with _grass. _You know, that plant that grows in patches in that wasteland field just outside the Scrapyard lands? Except this green grass was _everywhere. _But this field was surrounded with trees all together, lots and _lots _of trees." Nothing was said in response. He continued talking, his eyes taking on a far-off look while his voice went into a wistful lull.

"The dream... Everything was good again. The ground was _so soft_, and the weather was just right. It was always just a little cool--felt good. You could walk into that place with trees and feel the nice wind blow all over you. Everything even _smelled _good, smelled like plants--and flowers. Oh, there were _flowers _there too. You could also see some beautiful animals delicately walking through the place with trees or going out onto the field. I think they used to be called _deer... _There were little soft furry animals there too--cute animals, cuter than rats, believe it or not. Everything was just so right and so relaxing... And everything... Everything..." Jack Bent Bent his head to look down at the sidewalk, tears coming to his eyes. "Not like..._this damned place. _All of this _damned _concrete and these machine-buildings and..."

"You fool!" sneered the replicate. "Like a fool, you dreamed of a foolish place that does not exist. There are no forests of trees. There are no fields of grass. All that exists here and now are the desert-wilds and wastelands that stretch between the strong cities of concrete and machines, with good farms to provide food. Cities make the products that you use. Farms make the food you eat. And _that _is all.

"If you continue this _foolish _and weak talk of forgotten places, I shall give you pain to _make _you forget what is best forgotten. It shall not be enough pain to interfere with the task you must accomplish. It shall, however, be enough pain to _knock some of the foolishness out of you_. Awaken, you foolish dreamer!"

To that, Jack Bent shook his head as tears dripped. _No, no, no... _He didn't want to forget that wonderful place he saw in the dream, that place with green fields and cool forests, soft ground... It was better than here. Any place _there _was better than here, in this time.

Sechs then reached down with one of those big robot-machine arms, the huge hand wrapping around Jack Bent's left arm. Jack Bent was slightly muscular--a career criminal had to be athletic. But Sech's huge robot-hands made the man's arms seem thin. Sechs was also satisfied to see the man wince in pain while standing--or being lifted up to standing. "You shall stop this foolish talk. Also, you will then do what a person of Zalem has ordered you to do. Or perhaps the next orders out of Zalem shall be for a bounty put on your head."

Jack Bent's face crumpled into misery and sobbing. Sechs then let go of him--not because of mercy but because of disgust. The man then collapsed to sitting on the sidewalk and wrapped himself into a human ball with left arm clutched, sobbing like mad and rocking back-and-forth.

"You have heard what was necessary," said that replicate Sechs, staring at this sobbing and pathetic wretch. Sechs saw someone that looked to be less than worthless--a fleshie in grimy clothes with a thick smell of pollution-chemicals mixed with sweat. And the fact that the fleshie was blubbering all sorts of tears and drool out of his mouth while huddled in a pathetic ball was even worse. A pathetic and miserable wretch, that was what Sechs saw: something not even worth bothering any longer at the moment. The mighty nightmarish replicate then walked away.

2.

Perhaps an hour after those words of "encouragement" from Sechs, Jack Bent was just feeling so downtrodden and lost. He stumbled to his feet, then began to walk the streets in a daze for most of the day. He still had to find a place to get a fresh change of clothes, wash up a bit, then maybe eat something. There was no such thing as hotels around here just as there were no hospitals. He could still buy some clothes, which he did. The various people around the Motorball business--Motorball team coaches, business executives from sponsors, crazed fans--came from deeper in Scrap Iron City to be here. And wherever there were people, there would be smaller businesses to sell them what they needed...or thought they needed--restaurants. Right now, Jack Bent needed some clothes if he was going to get into a certain club.

So near the south end of Tire Wire Alley, the curly haired man in grimy clothes stepped into one of those clothing shops. His grimy, mottlesd sneakers stepped onto the nice clean carpeting. Also true was how the rest of his outfit was just as grimy and greasy in contrast to the new and clean clothes all along the circular clothing racks and on the shelves. Everything in here was just so fresh and spotless while he was all grimy and nasty... And _that _was why the cyborg shopkeepers looked on him with disgust--a male cyborg in stylish business suit, along with a tall elegant female in a long silk dress.

Those two looked at each other, looks of shock and disgust on their faces. What is _that_ thing doing in _our_ boutique?Merely the presence of something like that made them angry. The boutique owners had a vision of reality in which they were somewhat above the common people of Scrap Iron City, especially since this border-neighborhood was primarily occupied by a middle class created by the Motorball business. In their view of reality, most all the people of Scrap Iron City were little more than street-trash with jobs.

"May we _help _you!" sneered the male cyborg. He took quick and angry steps over here, glancing over Jack Bent's not-so-clean clothes. On his mind was this was another case of yet _another _bit of street-trash coming in for whatever reason.

Jack Bent knew how to talk to people like this. It first involved him reaching to his back where he had tied his little sack of cash. Out of it, he took some of those high-denomination credit-chips he had obtained earlier from a cache. "Sure thing, you can help me!" smiled Jack Bent as the male shopkeeper's eyes widened.

Oh _yes...! _The introduction of money into matters _certainly _changed things altogether. Suddenly this smelly wretch from the streets was dirty with credit chips, _cash-money. _That stink of chemical contamination and human dirt really had to be the smell of someone filthy rich. The boutique co-owner suddenly wanted to _hug _this human.

"You can help me by helping me look neat again," explained Jack Bent. _Heh, and then you can help yourself by getting a new attitude. _Well, he thought the second thing instead of saying it out loud.

"Of course, sir! We shall assist you presently!" enthused the male shopkeeper. He gladly took a rather sizable credit-chip from Jack Bent's slightly greasy right hand. So now the stink and disheveled look of this "street trash" was the smell and look of someone with money. Money was always welcome around here. And they were extra-willing to allow Jack Bent usage of the toilet and bathroom--those in place for human patrons--as so he could refresh himself.

Half an hour later, Jack Bent emerged from this city clothing store. And now he was clean and refreshed. His clothes were as clean as brand-new: new tee shirt, new set of slacks, looking and feeling a great deal better. But the part about being _clean _was the bestHe was able to wash up in the bathroom, using a new undershirt like a washcloth. And of course he had purchased clothes. The pricey tee shirt and slacks he purchased didn't feel any different from the cheaper clothes he walked in with, leaving him to wonder why stores like this could get away with charging so darned much for clothes.

Ah well... What mattered was that a place like this had short-sleeved tee shirts at all. Those darned shopkeepers wanted to dress him up in buttoned shirt and some kind of fancy business-jacket... Heck no, he wouldn't have that! Casual slacks and short-sleeved tee shirt, he had been wearing that style of outfit for centuries and was never really out of style--all the crazy styles he had seen among cyborgs and humans. And what was up with those..._bunny suits?_

_Now _he could head on over to that club. Jack Bent knew ahead of time that the girl was going to be there about six minutes from now; he could _feel _it. Which girl? It was _the _girl that was going to be at that particular club bar--the oh-so-beautiful girl with the almost elfin delicate beauty and big exotic eyes. With the girl would be her replicate bodyguard.

The girl Kyrie was the one he was also supposed to kidnap, to send her body intact up to Zalem. Normally, bodies sent up to Zalem are separated into organs and limbs. This case was supposed to be an exception. Someone up in Zalem wanted Kyrie's body.

Jack Bent's distant idea about where Kyrie was going, it turned out to be right. He followed that vague sort of idea. And now he so happened to wander into the general area of where there was a certain club. The girl was over there...

Kyrie, she was just so petite and pretty--a slender young girl with those big eyes and that long moon-silk hair. The girl was wearing shorts to go with green shirt and open jacket... She was holding hands with her female bodyguard, a bit taller and also pretty to look at. They were prettily smiling and talking to the big-armed cyborg bodyguards that flanked the entrance.

No problem, the bouncer gestured to let them in--just as Jack Bent thought they would. Somehow... He somehow knew exactly when and how Kyrie was going to get into that club, knew exactly how Kyrie was going to glance up at her bodyguard as they walked into the club while holding hands. He'd seen this all before.

And..._that was when a dizzy spell hit him. He staggered a little and was nearly jostled..._by a big-bellied man dressed in busiess clothes--probably another one of those businessmen associated with Motorball sponsorship or something. Something... There was something inevitable about this whole business. As for why it gave him a headache to think on it, he was unsure.

Also unsure was _why _he continued to follow the girl around--even though he was not going to _really _kidnap her. Well, he _said _he would kidnap the girl. He also _said _that it was going to take time in figuring out how to deal with the female bodyguard. The female bodyguard was a close replicate of an especially beautiful and deadly cyborg-huntress out of Zalem, especially dangerous... How could a fleshie like himself quickly deal with a replicate copied from one of the most cuttingly dangerous female cyborg ever?

Those were stupid questions, great big cover-up excuses, the frilly words he used to keep other career criminals from killing him for not living up to the contract. Jack Bent _had _to fulfill the terms of his contract with that client in Zalem. Contracts for black-market work from Zalem are extremely rare, and Scrap Iron City's criminal underworld much preferred to have _all _contracts met--even if it meant kidnapping and murdering innocent girls with big eyes and unusual pretty looks.

He found himself walking along this sidewalk in going on over to the club, late-afternoon sunlight slanting down and shadowing this city street. There was the _thump-thump-thump-thump _sound of club-music beats pounding out from the club itself where all the people with money and good looks were going in. Yes, dressed as he was in slacks and tee-shirt, he was going over to a club where most of the clientele dressed like Motorball millionaires and candidates for Zalem citizenship--as if there ever really _were _candidates for citizenship in that floating city. Some other couples were let in by the big cyborgs at the entrance...before one of those great big cyborgs looked down on him.

"Hey-hey-y-y!" shouted the big cyborg-man standing left of the open entrance--a cyborg dressed in black pants and sleeveless red shirt--big metal arms exposed. He was shouting not to be rude but because the music was so heavy with bass and loudness. And, oh my goodness, the big cyborg-man so happened to be dressed in a similar style to one that had given Jack Bent quite a thrashing way earlier today. "Where'd you buy that outfit?"

Jack Bent strained to remember the over-priced place where he bought these fresh clean clothes... The name of the place began with an _L. _Come on; come on... He had to remember. "I brought these duds from _Lorraine's,_" he finally answered, trying to speak above the _thumpa-thumpa-thumpa _beats coming from inside the club. "I forget how much I paid for it, though!"

"Yeah, that sounds about right!" answered the bouncer. He then gestured to the entrance. It was certainly the clothes that got Jack Bent into the club. He himself may not have noticed the difference between a 5-credit and 500-credit tee-shirt, but these bouncers certainly did! And so the expensively clad criminal was allowed in, someone who began the day as a grimy wretch.


	9. Chapter 9

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 9—Dark Pains of Contamination

1.

"Okay, it's nearly noon," said the blonde-haired cyborg-woman--a tall and beautiful female figure standing at the door, long blonde hair to go with her looks. A cyborg could have a body as physically attractive as desired--so long as there was the money to buy it. And from the looks of her, the cyborg-woman clearly had the money for that sort of thing.

She had money because she was the current co-owner of this night club. Also happening right now was her trying to balance mercy with impatience in dealing with the sleeping man on the floor. "You've had your indoor rest. Now that you're done sleeping off your hangover or whatever, it's time for you to get out to go do whatever it is that you do. So come on! Up with you and stuff!" She waited until Jack Bent was standing up and able to walk before saying anything else.

Jack Bent eventually got to his feet and barely knew where he was this time--another day waking up somewhere else, this afternoon. This was the storage-room of the club--concrete floor beneath, with boxes and beer kegs along the left and right walls. It was no place really fit for a fleshie to sleep. Yet here Jack was after paying the cash to have spent the night. And the sight he saw was a welcome one to his very male brain.

Cyborg though she was, Jack Bent felt himself become reinvigorated by just _looking _at her body. Her clothes exposed some lengths of her body while clinging to the rest... A tight leather skirt clung to hips and thighs, belted at the flat and articulate abdomen--the midriff exposed, and a tight whithe top clung to the shapes of breasts. Dark shoes fit her feet at the ends of nicely shaped legs. She was indeed beautiful--so long as one never-minded the fact that her body was made of metal parts. Her face was of synthetic flesh and elegant, a smooth synthetic face framed with long blonde hair from the scalp.

_Her body is electromechanical with an alloyed exterior, you horny dope, _insisted part of the thinking components of his mind. Except the _thinking _parts of his brain were not being heard at the moment. _How can you have sex with a body of cyborg-and-robot-metal--unless she's equipped for that? And not all cyborgs are!_

After last night in the nightclub's main room, hanging around long after Kyrie left, he needed to get off to somewhere and go to sleep. The night before last was him sleeping in a factory. This time, it was a one-night deal at the night club itself. He got up off of the mattress he'd made from lost clothes--feeling a wee bit off-balance. _Root beer, it was only root beer, _he thought to himself as he went unsteadily towards the door. That cyborg-woman pushed the door open wider, her back to it.

She was quite a sight to his male brain... He stepped past with his right arm close to himself to avoid brushing against the cyborg-woman's chest, which was hard to do--an effort to keep from actually touching. The front of her elastic, abdomen-baring top filled out quite nicely with twin shapes. The top did not hide much at all. So why should a cyborg wear clothes at all? The curves of her body were just shaped metal, but cyborgs were still conscious of their bodies--which was why most cyborgs still wore clothes instead of walking around naked. _Most, _not all, because some cyborgs just didn't care. They were just electromechanical bodies with articulated joints where necessary. All the same...

Right now, a female cyborg--_definitely _female--was standing with her slender back to the door and holding it open, standing in the doorway itself. It took that extra bit of effort to get past the beautiful cyborg-woman. And he took that extra effort and stepped through sideways. Or maybe she wanted him to touch...? Oh, and of course, cyborgs still had human brains, and human brains thought of _that _sort of thing as well.

He was out in the short hallway and had both hands on the metal door of this rear exit. "Wait a minute," said the female cyborg, her voice suddenly becoming less than cheerful. "I didn't forget... I noticed you staring at the girl last night. You know who I'm talking about. Just so you know, the girl is taken. You just have to know that."

_She's not taken in the way I'm thinking, _thought Jack Bent. He thought that, said aloud, "Well... I can look, can't I? She's probably the cutest thing for hundreds of miles around--so petite and pretty, with long pretty hair... Like a living doll, you know? And those big gold-colored eyes of hers have a way of getting attention. I can't help _but_ to stare."

"Hey! What are you, some kind of _stalker!_" exclaimed the cyborg-woman. Anger burned into the edges of her voice. There was then the sound of her putting her hands on her leather-covered hips, followed by the sound of her increased anger. "Listen, you fleshie loser... I can't tell the Factory anything about you because you haven't done anything yet. But I can sure as Hell keep _you _away from the girl while she visits _this _club! Look, she's barely even an adult. Some of us are thinking she can't grow up at all...because of her illness. Her father left her when she was younger! Left her alone! So guess what? We all in this neighborhood look out for her. It's so we can keep creeps like _you _from getting the wrong ideas." The cyborg-woman crossed slender metal arms. "Besides, Kyrie isn't interested in boys. Not at all. To think I let you sleep here and felt sorry for you! Now we all know better."

Jack Bent stood there gripping the handle of the exit-door. Oh yes, city people looked out for each other. This was a land without institutions like schools or police--at least, not for those who lived on the lands beneath the floating city of Zalem. Young ladies like Kyrie could actually live and be safe in places like Scrap Iron City because their local community was always watching for trouble. And right now, someone of that community was doing some of that watching.

He actually was _supposed _to be one of those people to look out for--put under contract to take Kyrie and send her intact body up to Zalem. It was supposed to be Kyrie's _body, _not necessarily alive: just well-preserved and shipped up. _No... No... No..._ Jack Bent didn't want the girl to be hurt. He didn't _want _to hurt the girl--so precious, so delicately beautiful and cute. _And _she was smart.

Kyrie was one of those good and wonderful people who make the world just seem better and more beautiful. He would _never _hurt her. But he did not say that to the cyborg-woman standing behind him. _Click-clack. _He pushed open the door to step out into the side-alley that flanked this club.

"Don't come around here anymore!" shouted the cyborg-woman after him. The angry shout rang in his ears as he stepped onward. This brought him into the alleyway at the side of the club, where beer-kegs and club food stocks were brought in. No use hanging around here anymore, so he walked towards the mouth of the alleyway. Walking out there brought him into the brightness of the city afternoon.

Thoughts bearing down on him, the sun glaring down, Jack Bent began his walk. There was nowhere in particular he had to go at the moment. He _could_ go wash himself and his clothes at the clinic--health clinics for fleshies--for a nominal amount of money--a few credits. Or he could just go _buy _some clean clothes whenever his current set of duds became too foul. Most people seldom noticed or cared if he did get too dirty.

Though generally homeless, most fleshies kept themselves and their children clean somehow-finding pipes to open and big tubs that were once parts of machines--washing clothes and bodies in that water. They did that even if the water available was tainted with chemicals that may or may not be toxic. Some people were just dirty and didn't care. As for drying, the bright sun was good for that. This city was in a desert region. Then again, most of the land was desert nowadays except for the occasional city or farm. The Scrapyard region didn't even count--that landscape of metal junk and hills.

Clean clothes, a shower or bath, those were things to try and get away from being dirty. Or maybe his struggle for better cleanliness was also him trying to wash away the grotesque guilt of what he was hired to do? The kidnapping and murdering of an innocent girl, just the every-present thought of doing so, still weighed on him and pressed into his mind.

In the afternoon light of the city, he felt very much exposed. The hot light of the sun illuminated everything, sunlight glaring through the slightly toxic haze of the city sky. Night-time was his preferred time because it did so much to conceal what a person did not want to see. A person could hide in shadows if one did not want to be found. Also, people in positions of authority were always more likely to cause a person trouble during daylight hours. Jack Bent was in trouble with certain kinds of authority--particularly one kind of authority from Zalem. It was not that he wanted to deal with them in the first place. No, the man just wanted to do what was necessary to earn money enough to get by without having to resort to the means everyone else did.

There was not much going on in terms of traffic--on the street or along this sidewalk. The sidewalk, it was something to look at while walking with his head down. It was not that the man really had a particular desire to look ahead in going somewhere. Where was he going? There was no particular direction in mind.

Then a pair of better-dressed cyborgs were talking the _amazing _crashes and blasts of destruction that happened last night over at the Motorball Arena. Maybe he ought to follow them just because there was nothing else for him to do around here--besides _kidnapping _and _murder. _So follow them he did. It did not take too much of an effort to just get in step with them.

Murder did not have to be a big deal. It happened over at the Motorball circuit again and again: fiery destruction as the cyborg competitors speeded around that great big track at speeds that sounded ridiculous. Why the Hell would anyone want to go around in circles and risk death repeatedly? It was for the purpose of getting that ball along the track and to the end. Those that failed and lost died in fiery explosions of sparks and flying metal body parts. Around and around... Or had he thought of this yesterday?

These two guys in business suits, they were some big-and-important people related to the Motorball business. The Motorball players zoomed around that great big track and risked their lives each and every game, while the hard-working mechanics and coaches kept the players--the _surviving players--_wise and in good repair. Oh yeah, it was pretty much like the way things were in Scrap Iron City overall: All the people who did the _real _hard work were paid enough to keep them happy, while the people in charge wore business suits told everyone else what to do...and took most of the profits.

Just then, something changed with the two businessmen that Jack Bent was following. One of them glanced back at him--as if he was preparing to attack and rob them of money. It was that sort of _look _used by rich people in looking down on fleshies and Scrappies who were _not _rich. Jack Bent was too familiar with that look after having seen it too often.

Wilting under that glare, he stopped, turned to face the street. He didn't need people staring at him as if he was the worst loser in the world. That was because he already _knew _that he was the worst loser in the world--thank you very much!

Traffic was going by along the street--trucks going by--their heavy wheels rumbling along as their payloads were weighed down with goods along the street. Those trucks were always going to and from places around this time of day--transporting clothes for shops or wine for the clubs. Those trucks could do a lot of damage to someone caught in the street. If he so happened to be in the path of one of those trucks, there would be a hard _thwack, _then everything would black out--the end of his story. So he took a step forward as a particularly fast-moving truck was going along the city street...

_Fwa-a-aa-rk-k-k! _The gigantic vehicle just barely roared past him--the horn going with it. He could feel the air with the vehicle's passing--coming less than a meter from himself. The truck driver shook a metal fist at him while screaming something. Jack Bent felt that shaky and light feeling of fright blasting through his mind and body. That really was close.

He eventually made it to the other side of the street--though maybe he would have been better off not doing so. Jeez McCheese! Did he just come close to _killing _himself? The man didn't even have the courage to do _that! _So he did not have the courage to do his current job, and he did not have the courage to do himself in.

"_Jack Bent!_" came a man's shout from somewhere behind along this sidewalk. He did not bother to turn to see who it was. All that mattered was why someone just shouted his name. It was likely _another _thug sent by the criminal underbosses of big ol' Scrap Town. The way things were going for him these days, the owners of the shouted voice would likely not be at all friendly. "_Hey you!_" went that loud voice, again being loud--_very _loud. One thing about cyborgs' voices was how they could be very loud and still be very understandable--easy for cyborgs to yell like Hell at a person. Cyborgs didn't need portable microphones and amplifiers.

If Jack Bent did not have courage enough to kill his own self, then others would likely have that courage for him. It was that slumped line of thinking which prevented him from even bothering to run or evade at this point. Another person in his position would be thinking, _Run like Hell! _Except no one else _was _in his exact position at this time. No, his mind more had a question mark at the end of those three words, _Run like Hell? _So... _Why_ run like Hell? He just didn't have the will at the moment, just as he didn't have the heart or will to kidnap that happy, pretty girl who was living her own nice life.

Thank goodness the angry cyborgs did not take too long in getting here. At least they could get it over with quickly. The sound of heavy feet running for him was like mental torture in waiting for something to happen. This ritual of pain began with a cyborg-man's electromechanical hands gripping both his arms and lifting him up. He then had that amazing experience of his feet no longer touching the sidewalk while both his arms felt close to breaking. Was there a _popping _sound within his left shoulder?

2.

The cyborg-man took Jack Bent into an alley... Jack Bent didn't know who he was, though--a rubbery faced cyborg-man wearing beige work-pants, thick brown shoes on the feet that were close to being boots, footwear that was good to kick fleshies with. He was unfamiliar--probably one of the newly hired of the criminal underworld. Jack Bent didn't know the alley either. Yet he knew enough about alleys to not want to be taken into one at the moment. _Alleys, they almost always have not-good things happen in them, _he thought even with the pain of his popped shoulder sinking inThe fact that he was being less-than-willingly being transported to such a place certainly meant that something of the _not-good_ category was going to happen to him. And of course it was one of those less-than-clean alleyways of this city border neighborhood--one of those alleys with chunks of metal junk and a few industrial-sized garbage bags. Oh, about the things sometimes in alleyway garbage bags of Scrap Iron City, a person was sometimes better off _not _knowing.

Jack Bent expected to be beaten up yet again. What Jack Bent did not expect was how. He was first _slammed_ up against one of the alley's walls. Yeah, and the bricks were _hard--_too hard. There was too much pain

Jack Bent blinked his eyes, recovering consciousness. He was now lying sideways on the concrete floor of the alleyway--as usual. The left side of his face felt too loose and numb with a distant ache, and his vision on that side was also blurry. Hell, _both_ sides of his vision were blurry right about now; it was just that the left side was _more _messed up. The unfocused vision--and feeling of numbness--was actually good because it felt him from fully experiencing more of this experience one would define as torture. He'd rather be in a blurry and numb state-of-mind than be fully conscious and feel everything being done to him.

"What the Hell is wrong with you?" asked the cyborg-man. It wasn't asked in a loud-and-angry sort of way. It was more asked in a conversational way. That cyborg-man was then polite enough to give Jack Bent hints as to what this business was all about--this business of one person making another person go _wham _against a brick wall. "You were asked to do a job from Zalem! Do you hear me? It's from _Zalem. _And you are not doing it."

Jack Bent tried to say something through the haze of pain. "Well... I'm not sure about this gig," he said. "Say... Would you be able to do it? I'm having an attack of consciousness and what-not..." The distant ache in his jaw was getting bigger right about now. "Well, howu about this? _I would prefer not to_."

"You _prefer not to, _huh? I'm sorry to hear that," said the cyborg-man in beige work-pants, talking to the sprawled figure of Jack Bent on the alleyway floor. "And you are going to be even sorrier than you ever were in your pathetic life. They pay me to make people like you feel sorry--especially you pathetic fleshies. Why the Hell do you still have a meat body anyway? Guy your age ought to have metal arms or something by now... Oh well! Let's get down to business..."

Lying down here on the rough concrete, Jack Bent then saw one of those shoe-boots go back, back some more... _Whamp! _An explosion of pain and sickness blew up inside of his chest when the boot-shoe caught him there. "_U-u-u-gh-h-h!_" He sucked in a breath and clutched at his own chest. A quick exhalation, and he had to painfully suck in another breath. "_U-u-u-h-h-h!_" By now, having to struggle for air after being attacked by professional cyborg thugs was getting to be a habit. He hoped that the habit would not have to last too much long. _"U-u-u-u-ugh-h!_"

_Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp... _Jack Bent stopped gasping just long enough to hear the low and thick sounds of very heavy boots coming in this direction. "_U-u-u-ugh-h!"_ It sounded like a very powerful thing coming in this direction. _Well, that's just peachy, _he thought--when he wasn't concentrating on sucking in another painful breath. _"U-u-u-u-ugh-h-h-hp!_"

The curly haired man on the alley floor did _not _see who or what was From where he was lying, Jack Bent saw what just walked into this alley. But he did see the cyborg-man's shoe-booted feet move as the big thug turned to the right. "What the Hell are _you _supposed to be?" asked the cyborg-man, talking to that newcomer with the armored boots. "Hey, lemme go! Big-armed freak! You..."

_Shwank-k-k! _There was a brief blast of sparks and sprayed cyborg cooling fluids. A metal arm fell a foot from Jack Bent's face. It was actually one of the arms used by the cyborg-man to grab Jack Bent. "My _arm!_"

"And you will lose the _other _arm if you continue to beat this person any more," snarled the voice. Jack Bent squirmed around enough to have a look at the newcomer--an impression of great big armored shin-boots. He turned his head enough to look up at a dark figure in a ridgy black bodysuit--and the _biggest _set of machine-arms he had seen on a cyborg that size. "I was sent by Miss Aidas to _assist _you in convincing this man to do his job. Yet it seems that you are more obsessed with causing pain than convincing him of anything."

"Sent..._by Miss Aidas?_" blurted the cyborg-man. Now he was talking as if the ripped-off arm was the last of his concerns. That particular name had him worried. "Wh-why didn't you say so? It's about time somebody else was hired for this!"

"_U-u-uh-h-hp..._" came another gasp from Jack Bent. He heard what the replicate said. _Sweet mercy...! _So now maybe he would not have to do the disgusting job. No, not him! Then came the thought that someone _else _was going to hurt sweet and pretty little Kyrie. _No! _

"I was sent to find _this _man because the same man must be kept on the job," insisted the Sechs replicate. "It was for that reason which caused me to stop you from foolishly beating him to death. What you were doing now was also a very foolish thing to do."

"Hey now! I would have stopped before he died," complained the cyborg-man. "It's not like I _like _to beat up on fleshies... Hmm, well... Maybe a _little_. It's just business, you know? And if one of our guys needs a little convincing to do a job, we have to give it to 'em--or kill 'em."

"_R-r-a-a-rgh.!" _That massive roar of sound blasted throughout this alley. It took a moment to realize that the _roar _came from Sechs. Then, even with the _roar _still echoing, the nightmarish replicate dashed forward to _grab _the cyborg-man. Now the one-armed cyborg-thug was being gripped around the waist with two huge machine-hands--being held like a large toy. And like mistreated toys, the missing arm was a similar touch. "I should twist your torso just enough to keep you body's mechanical organs functioning, barely functioning? It would leave your pathetic brain slowly dying within your pathetic metal skull..."

There was one sound of something cracking. Apparently, the cyborg-man's own torso was just now slightly crumpled. "A-a-ah!" he yelped. "Alright, already! I hear you! I'll leave 'em alone! Geez, you already took an arm today, and that's gonna cost me money to repair! They're custom-made."

"They are pathetic arms. Now you have an opportunity to have your arms remade into ones of better quality," sneered Sechs. "Leave now. Or I will make good on my threat."

"I hear ya! I hear ya!" declared the cyborg-man. He then decided to take this change to get the Hell away from this Sechs replicate. But first he quickly dipped down to go scoop up the electromechanical arm that was ripped off--a severed electromechanical trailing metal connection-strands and wires greasy with cyborg machine-oils. The way he ran away was befitting someone who was just a little off-balanced--due of course to the fact that a limb was gone. Still, there was the sound of his heavy and off-beat run carrying him away, going away.

"Thanks, lady...or man..." said Jack Bent as he sat down on the ground of this alleyway, "Or whichever you are. Say, which one are you supposed to be, anyway? Something about you reminds me of somebody I met a long time ago. She tried to kill me, too--chased me all over the place, when I still had a really cool cape-thing that let me do stuff. Anyway, you really pulled my bacon out of the fire just now!"

Sechs snarled in speaking. "Shut up. I did not save you for the sake of 'mercy.' I have done this on an order from my superiors in Zalem. You are involved in an action of potential illegal trafficking of human flesh. GiB desires more investigation into your doings."

"Say what now?" asked Jack Bent--his face nervous, his gut becoming full of fear. Except the question wasn't really a question. The mentioning of GiB was enough to make his insides turn cold with the frozen mush of fear. Oh yes... The people of GiB, those jokers were the _last _ones that a career thug would ever want to know about. "I don't know what you're talking about. Even I don't know what I'm talking about right now. Now what was I talking about?"

The Sechs replicate hunched over, huge robot-arms hanging at the sides as the face was now close to Jack Bent's eyes. "If I must mention the organization again aloud, then perhaps you do not deserve this second chance. You are not fit to talk about this business at this time. I will give you two hours to make yourself fit for work. Then I will find you."

The thought came to mind, _What'll happen if I don't? _Nope, he would _not _ask that question aloud, because it was very obvious that Sechs here was on the edge of losing his or her--or its--anger. He could tell that the nightmarish replicate wanted to do nothing but crush and eliminate anything in its way--a replicate all full of emotional steel and fury. Man, he could _feel _the fury. And right now, it felt like the heated metal-smelling breath of a pissed-off replicate. _What'll happen if I don't? _No, stop thinking about it! Don't even...

"You have your information," declared Sechs. "You know what must be done." That nightmarish replicate then stood straight again. There was the sound of a boot-sole grinding on the alley floor, the sound of Sechs pivoting to turn away, to go walking away. Then came the sound of Sechs heavy clomping armored footwear in walking out of this alley. There was a slight swaying motion of those huge construction-machine arms as the replicate moved. Heck no, a person did _not _want to be on the receiving end of punishment from those robotic limbs--especially if one was a fleshie who has received more than a little physical pain already.

He sat there in the alley for some moments after Sechs went clomp-walking away. _Wow, _went a thought. Thoughts of GiB now being all mixed up in his business was a real mind-stretcher. Maybe he would live to see this job through anyway. And just maybe, he would get out of doing this crazy job. He could try and manipulate this situation as so sweet and pretty Kyrie wouldn't end up being hurt. It was just a matter of wait-and-see for the moment. _Just,_ _wait..._

First up, he had to _stand up_. "Gosh darn-it..." he muttered as he put his right palm to the floor of this alleyway. He painfully got to his feet--and a hint of headache swam around in his head to go with all the pain of his body--aches from previous injuries and building pains from new ones. But his _head_, it felt like a swirling mess. It was probably also because his body was in such awful-rotten shape from that latest attack. Staggering yet again today, he wondered if cyborgs ever stop beating up on him. The pain of accumulated deep bruises--of squeezed and beaten skin and muscle tissue--was seriously beginning to take its toll.


	10. Chapter 10

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 10—Ripped by Nightmares and Dreams

1.

Jack Bent made into to a bar—didn't exactly know how, didn't _remember _exactly how. So here he was, sitting at one of the daytime drinking places with both doors open, a view of the street outside. He had a tall mug of--oddly enough--root beer in front of himself. This was him just biding his time in waiting for the right time of day. It was when he was supposed to get up out of this place and go to the border.

It was getting to be late afternoon too fast. Or was it? For some reason, Jack Bent was having a hard time telling what time of day it was because there was...something wrong with the sunlight--at least to him. Or it could be for the very same reasons that he didn't remember how he got to this bar in the first place! Let's see... It's the afternoon, early morning, or something like that. The sun out there was just too bright for him.

That sunlight out there blazing down on the cityscape was like the angry glaring focus of a nuclear-powered security spotlight. That bright light illuminated _everything_. It was so bright to him that it seemed to reveal each and every wrong and shadowy detail, every patch of grime, every bits of grit, every scar and blemish of all people and all things. Jack Bent took on the idea that, just maybe, people could read the expression on his face right now and tell what a rotten low-down criminal scoundrel he had been all of his life.

Sure, he had done wrong in his life. A career criminal, he _had _to do wrong to other people for the sake of just eating. He had sold the drug lycanthropazine to other fleshies--knowing full well that it turned the users of it into monsters. _Ah well, if they want to become mutants, let 'em: more money coming this way. _ More than once, he had helped load trucks with crates that he _knew _were full of stolen body parts--_human _body parts. _They're just street trash. Nobody is gonna miss 'em_. And then, it was found out that Jack Bent had a knack for smuggling: Any smuggling shipment he had been involved in had _never _been caught. So they set him up with more than a few "special" jobs.

This was one of those special jobs. This afternoon, he was supposed to go to a certain part of Tire-Wire Alley and stand by--to be ready to perform the act of kidnapping Kyrie. But he couldn't _tell _if it was afternoon because the daylight looked all funny and wrong. What time of day was it at all? Or maybe...

He thought back to this morningHe remembered not being able to see out of his left eye for a little while, the result of having taken a blow to the head during his recent spate of beatings. And there were the _headaches. _Oh Hell yes... There were the headaches. Add to that how he was feeling just a tad bit confused about the time of day right now. So maybe it was not the daylight that was wrong. Maybe it was just _him. _Brain damage, that could be it. The thought of concussion-induced brain damage was enough to make him give pause, all of the beatings he had taken.

_Brain damage, _thought Jack Bent. He also thought back to when he was having trouble seeing out of his left eye and how he couldn't quite think straight for too long without something bizarre sneaking into his mind. Or maybe he was just losing his mindWhy not? An awful lot of people seemed to be losing their minds as well. Losing one's mind could easily explain nightmares about their brains being cut out by strange scientist-monsters in dark places. It would also explain the idea that a person thought he or she could see what was going to happen two days from now--like how there was going to be a karmic inversion blast that would nuke and obliterate everything within sixty kilometers.

No... Now _that's_ just stupid. He really _must _be losing his mind. What wasn't stupid, though, was his inability to tell the time of day. Was it afternoon or late afternoon? He leaned away from the table and squinted to look beyond the doors. Well, there was a modest crowd of people out and walking the sidewalks--meaning that it was likely after working hours at most Factories. So it had to be getting around that time.

He stood up from his seat in this bar. It was either he get up and do this, or there would be even more beatings. Do the job, or the beatings will continue. More beatings, more threats, and now there was GiB involved. He couldn't afford to skip out on this job; that was for sure. It was either he kidnap the girl today--or maybe he would not live to make the choice again. And today, there was going to be the only opportunity for this.

The door out of this drinking place was that way. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no way out of this particular series of events. It was as if Jack Bent knew ahead of time what was about to happen. He would go to that street. And then...

Now he was standing across the street from those two buildings that faced that broad field of wasteland that separated Scrap Iron City from the Scrapyard--that vast wasteland covered with hills of metal junk dumped from Zalem. He was looking across the street and looking between the two machine-buildings--looking off into the distance and seeing the sandy field, the first hills of junk off in the distance. Now _when _did he walk here?

_Oh no, not again, _he thought. He was not _seconds _from _just _having walked here—or something. He _had _to have taken all of those steps between the bar and this street. The bar he was just in, it was blocks away. It's not like he just blinked out of existence—and blinked back in at another place. The ol' think-works in his noggin failed to cooperate just now. He did not remember walking, did not know, could not recall...as hard as he could.

What mattered now was that here he was in standing on the sidewalk and breathing in the wonderfully polluted city air that came in from deeper within Scrap Iron City. He was just standing here, a sick and dizzy feeling swirling around in his head. And the hot sun was shining down on everything. It was that nuclear-powered spotlight feeling...

People were walking by plenty of fleshies in casual businesswear--those business people who were generally in charge of the Motorball business. Those people walked by as cars went by. All the buildings were in place, too. And so the stage was set. _Just like a Motorball event, scheduled to go right on time, _thought Jack Bent. Going with that sick-and-dizzy feeling was that idea of everything being _just right _for what the Hell was going to happen.

He found himself looking around the crowd--looking for something or someone. Those two usually came to the city more than twice a week. They were not due to come by here. But _that feeling _was telling him, _You're wrong, sucker! That sweetie moonsilk-haired girl and her sexy bodyguard are going to come right on in here--any freakin' minute. Just you wait. _

_That's crazy talk, _he thought in response. After all, there is no way a person can see random events without specific information. Nobody can see the future. People only _believe _that they can. If this was a thousand years ago, that sort of people would have been strapped up and locked away in soft-walled rooms. Jack Bent was certainly _not _that sort. He knew with all the solid-stoned sureness of reality that the only way to know the future is by having lived through it—and remembering. There was no way that there was going to be the girl and her bodyguard walking around the corner...

Then two things happened at once. A sudden whimsy of a thought made him turn his head to the _left. _Sechs was walking along _this _sidewalk. Then, that same whimsy of a thought made him _tu-ur-r-rn _his head to the right—to face those two big machine-buildings that flanked the entrance to this neighborhood. _Right there, _Kyrie and Sieben stepped right on into this neighborhood. And he didn't even _see _them coming in this direction. What the Hell is going...?

He opened his mouth to shout, _Hey you, short cute girl with the replicate! Go home, Kyrie! A great big cyborg-monster from five different flavors of industrial nightmares is going to kill your best friend and bodyguard! _

His mouth was open. And he was sure that the words were coming out. Except...there was now..._too much noise. Trucks and traffic, cyborgs and the crowd, they were all suddenly very loud at the very same time that he was trying to be loud. A great big truck came r-r-rumbling on by at the very moment that Jack Bent tried to scream a warning to beautiful Sieben and petite Kyrie across the street. _

_So he..._stopped shouting. There was no way that a fleshie could scream over the riotous chaos of noise generated by a random crowd of cyborg-people walking along this sidewalk. He tried to raise his arms, to cup his hands to his mouth, to _try and shout louder! _Except some cyborgs walking by started bumping into him and kept him from raising his arms. The harder he tried, the _harder came...the...random interruptions. _Then he saw the midgets.

At least he thought they were midgets: muscular, short red-skinned men with bald heads, dressed in gold-colored coveralls. They climbed up out of the hot summer-time city sidewalk as if the sidewalk was water to them. Left and right, the midgets in gold-colored coveralls began to approach him.

_What the..? I'm not seeing this. I'm...not, not, not seeing this, _thought Jack Bent. He squinched his eyes shut and kept thinking thoughts of pounding denial. _There is no way those short men can be real. They're just products of my imagination. Yeah, that's got to be the answer._

Oh-ho, but he _was_ seeing them. As that sick-and-dizzy feeling fell steeper into his abdomen, so did the solidity of the crimson-skinned midgets in gold-colored coveralls. He saw the details in the musculature of their arms left bare by their courdery coveralls of a gold color. The midgets all had blurry heads, but there they were.

Jack Bent turned to try and get away. _Whank-k-k!_ One of the little muscular midgets pounded a copper spike into his left foot--the spike really nailing his left foot to the concrete sidewalk

_Whank-k-k! For symmetry's sake, another one of them punded another copper stake into his right foot. "Elkric!" declared one of the red-skinned midgets in coveralls before climbing down into the sidewalk. The rest followed suit. _And..._he was still standing here. _

The mutant-midgets in gold coveralls were gone. And, of course, there were no copper stakes penetrating both feet and impaling his feet to the sidewalk. What was true, though, was how the man could.not move...his...feet... There was pain beginning to creep up from his feet and keeping him from moving as he watched the events that happened on the street. Sechs... Sechs walked right past Jack Bent--coming so close that he could see the individual strands of straight and crazy hair radiating from the nightmare replicate's scalp, seeing the tiniest of grains in the ridged dark bodysuit. Stop, he tried to say--only to be interrupted by a sudden blast of wind that snatched away his words.

Sechs had since run over to where Kyrie and Sieben were standing. That nightmarish replicat was shouting _something. _Jack Bent could not hear it because a sudden and random crowd appeared and was walking out of an alley—to go into another alley. As they walked by, they made for that same feeling generated by those swarthy skinned midgets in the gold coveralls. That nightmarish replicate had already called out Sieben for a fight. _Don't do it, Sieben, _thought Jack Bent. He could not shout the warning because of random interruptions. Neither could he move his feet--feeling impaled as they were. It was just a matter of him watching what was happening just now. It was as if the event was set by a mind that was thinking, _You must watch._

Still not choosing to give up, Jack Bent tried to walk over and stop Sechs. He tried to take a step--and nearly blacked out from the Hellish pain in _both _his feet. _Stupid, stupid, stupid... _Okay, he could not see the damned copper stakes now pounded into his feet. But he could sure as Hell _feel _those suckers! _You must watch, _went the idea, _yet not interfere. _

The Sechs replicate _grow-w-wled _with such a fury that the air itself seemed to quake--that Jack Bent could feel the sudden fear and worry of people in the midst of such a loud and frightening roar. Strange was how he seemed not to be hit with the ferocity of the noise himself. The same odd force that made those midgets appear and drive copper stakes into his feet also severely muffled the explosively loud sound coming from Sechs. It was as if something pulled him back a bit from reality itself. He could see everything--even if the daylight seemed a little odd; hearing was the problem now.

Sechs approached the place where Kyrie and Sieben were standing. He saw that beautiful and petite girl-woman in shorts, tee shirt and open jacket in a position of misery and worry. She was trying to keep hugging Sieben around the waist—Sieben, a replicate that was going to be beheaded and destroyed. _Run away! Run far and away, _shouted Jack Bent. Nope, the wind just _snatched _his words again. _Get out of there! That crazy Sechs is in a killing mode! Somebody...! Save the girl!_

Maybe Sieben heard a hint of a shout on the breeze. Or maybe beautiful replicate-girl just loved Kyrie so much that she would sacrifice herself to save the girl. Whatever... What happened was that Jack Bent saw Sieben look over hugging Kyrie and made eye-contact with some people standing by. Those people went over to Sieben and grabbed Kyrie's arms to pull her back. Kyrie was just such a dollish and slender thing that it was too easy for them to pull her away even though she put up such a frenzied effort.

Now those two could commence combat. He expected the Sechs replicate to open up the fight with something appropriately brutal... Ah, there it was: a blur-fast swinging swipe with one of those huge construction machine arms. Sieben tried to duck. _Tried _was the word because Jack Bent saw Sieben's head flick to the side in the direction of Sechs' blow.

What next...? There should have been Sieben kicking or something. Yes, Sieben did _kick _Sieben—the right foot impacting the thick metal shinguards of Sechs' armored boots. Jack Bent was glad to see that there was at least some damage to Sechs. He actually expected Seiben to have a chance. But there was no real chance after all. Suddenly one of the Sechs' replicate's gigantic fists was clutching the top of Sieben's head--a head with silken dark hair that was uncommonly long for a GR-model replicate. Then Sechs _yanked _off Sieben's head. The headless body collapse to the street--sparks and oil spraying from the metal neck-stump

_No! It wasn't supposed to end like that! _Jack Bent could _think _those words... As soon as he did, there was another thought coming to mind. Namely, how did he know at all how things were supposed to go? There was just that general feeling of knowing what was supposed to happen--the same feeling that made him come here at this time. _It wasn't supposed to...be..this...way...! _His mind was screaming with that thought as he weakly and painfully struggled even more with those unseen copper stakes in his feet. One of his feet came free, then _a sudden headache clutched his entire head in a vice of chopping pain. _

2.

…

_Fight it, you low-down scalawag...! Don't let it beat you. He thought that as the pai-i-in gripped into his skull. Except it was as if he was fighting his own head. Even as the headache made the vision out one eye seem like looking through a cracked camera lens, he fought it--fought the insane torturous agony. And the agony was actually so bad that he did not know which eye was giving him trouble. It drove him to his knees. Still, though on his knees, he had his left hand clutching his head while he pounded the sidewalk with his right. _

_You are _not _going to beat me! Not this time...! I'm getting away from here. I'm going to…stand myself up and be gone. In my head, it's all just in my head. I can beat this before it beats me! _

_That in mind, Jack Bent crawled away as the headache..._began to lessen. He gasped for air and staggered—but was standing. But the fact that his head was clearing now showed him the sad and dark events happening. Then came an inner voice of anger and guilt. _What about _the girl, _you rotten loser! _

_I can't do anything for Kyrie, _thought Jack Bent as he staggered away. He stopped stagger-walking just barely long enough to glance back at what was happening. Over there across the street, little Kyrie was still being held back by some bystanders--though the girl squirmed and struggled in their grip. And still, the Sechs replicate was standing over Sieben's headless body—the replicate-girl's head being held up in a machine-hand. Sechs plunged two fingers into the replicate-girl's eyesockets…

Hell, Jack Bent couldn't watch that any more! He quickly turned his head—a flash of a headache coming when he turned his head too fast. Then the inner voice spoke again. _Dumb idiot, _it said. _Now you go get some help! _

Yes, that was it. There had to be _someone_ he could find. That crowd of gawkers and bystanders was doing little but watching the dark and grotesque series of events. It was just like watching television to them--except with much better picture quality and stereo-sound. And since the cheap little televisions of these times had rotten picture quality to begin with, it was even more of a show for them--this wanton destruction of Kyrie's friend.

He staggered and strode towards a certain dark alley. It was as if sunlight was being swallowed up by it. There was the sound of wind howling into the alleyway--as if the wind was being sucked into a hole in the universe. _Never mind that, _he thought as he stepped..._into the darkness..._

_...And somehow, he stepped out of another alleyway—into…_a dimly lit place. It had a wooden floor. The walls were made out of big blocks of rusty metal--the metal blocks being somewhat uneven. Above was a ceiling that he could just barely see--a ceiling with rusty pipes. Thick liquids gushed through the pipes, while grime-smeared wires tied to the pipes hummed with intense electricity. In the middle of this dimly lit place was an engine-looking sort of machine. This place had no windows, but Jack Bent had the definite idea that he was somewhere else...

_Fwick! _TwinLights came on. Now there was a pretty young female--late teens or something--sitting atop an old engine-sized machine. Her legs were crossed. She was dressed in tight jeans and white tee-shirt that clung close to the shape of her slender body, with a open leather jacket worn over--knee-length biker-boots hugging her legs below the knees. Her fluffy brown hair framed a round face with a peaches-and-cream sort of complexion. And sitting right next to her was the same young woman. There was the same tight-fitting jeans, same tee shirt and jacket--with the boots--the same face with the same head of hair. Except her legs were crossed the other way.

Their dark eyes stared at Jack Bent--who made a _come over here _sort of gesture with his right arm. Both girls robotically uncrossed their legs to stand up on the floor. They then walked in synchronization in getting over to where Jack Bent was standing. It was time for them to go. So go they did. Jack Bent and the two artificial girls went..._into that howling darkness again..._

_...And the artificial twins appeared..._in the crowd--standing in the crowd seconds after Kyrie was knocked away by the Sechs replicate. The rest of the crowd was too busy ogling the scene of continued violence to care about the twins who suddenly stepped seemingly out of nowhere to be here. Jack Bent was not in sight at the moment though he went right with them.

He was instead back across the street again. It afforded him a view of Vicki and Vanessa blending right on into that crowd. Would they be willing to help Kyrie? He could not have been sure of that. Then again, he was not sure of too much of anything these days. What mattered was making sure that--in the course of doing his current job--that Kyrie not end up another body being sent up for the sake of usage in Zalem.

Kyrie broke loose from the people holding her! She had something in her right hand and was running right at the nightmarish Sechs replicate. _Please don't try it, _thought Jack Bent. _You can't win against that thing. _He took a step towards the street itself...just as a truck came _rr-r-rumbling _by from out of nowhere. _Nope! They're not going to let me interfere. _

He was right about Kyrie not being able to make it. What happened was, Sechs merely gave a _flick _of a gesture with one of those huge construction-machine arms. Kyrie was knocked up and back...like a doll thrown aside by someone angry. Except Kyrie was a real person--a person who was left lying unconscious when she landed.

A flash of headache made him stagger. _Oblamah, _declared a squealing, annoying voice. Jack Bent looked around. He was not sure where that declaration came from. Somewhere--nor did he know what language it was. Scrap Iron City had multiple languages, but _that _language wasn't one Jack Bent did not think he heard before. But it was a bit familiar... _Elkric, nog-floggin, _declared the same voice again. It was likely the voice of those short men in gold coveralls again--the ones that climb out of the sidewalks. They would likely come out of the sidewalk at any moment. They were probably going to come and stake his feet to the sidewalk again.

He saw a concrete section of this sidewalk go lifting up--opening into darkness. _Oh no, _he thought. First Jack Bent glanced down at the square hole in which he heard the first sounds of those strange midgets. Then he glanced over across the street where the petite girl with pale-blonde hair was lying unconscious. They were not going to let him get over there; he just knew it. And staying around here meant that they were going to _get _him--those muscular midgets in sunset-colored coveralls that came out of nowhere. But he could not leave yet--until he saw Kyrie being cared for.

Whichever happened first, Jack Bent was not sure. One of the artificial girls in biker clothes walked into the street to go help Kyrie. Something began to crawl up out of that square opening, emerging with muscular arms reaching out of the darkness to take a grip of this sidewalk. One of those alone was enough for him to turn away--and _run. _So he did so and made a staggering run to get the _Hell _away from here!

Being a person on the run was something that took on its own kind of sense. Jack Bent was not exactly sure _why _he was running right now--running from the appearance of those midgets in sunset-colored work-coveralls. It was not that they had ever done anything to him, not that he knew. It was just that there was the possibility of them _maybe _getting him. So he dipped into a right turn and ran through the alley.

An old metal crate made for a convenient foot-boost for him to get over this next wall. _Why _there was a wall there, Jack Bent did not know. And he did not care right now. It went back to being on the run and things making their own kind of sense. Things just _do. _There was no use mentally debating the existence of an end-of-alley wall. There was just the need to climb over it.

_Thump-p-p! _He landed a bit too hard on the other side of the wall and stumbled as he caught his feet in some metal junk--nearly shredded the soles of his sneakers. Damned local sneakers, they were barely comfortable. There was no way that this footwear was up to the quality of goods up in Zalem... Never mind, so long as the soles didn't shred.

And so he was on the run again. This time the alley ought to take him out the alley on the other side of the street. It would probably take _them _a while to sense where he was. A squeaky left turn on these sneakers let him go left and away some more. They would have to try harder to get him now!

Now...who were they? _They _were more than just very muscular midgets in sunset-colored coveralls. No, they had to be something else--probably one of Zalem's latest tricks. Zalem was always pulling some new kind of joke on the people who lived on the ground... So paying cheap bounties to bounty hunters wasn't enough to keep things in line? And those flying eyeball-creatures—those eyes in the sky—were not enough, either. What more could Zalem do to keep the people on the ground in line and working? Create an underground underclass of mutants, that was what!

Or maybe those mutants existed for another reason. Maybe the midgets were present to maintain the city itself--an upgrade to lowly worker-cyborgs that barely made enough money to live with. But if so, why had no one else but himself seen these creatures? Tire-Wire Alley is a big neighborhood--right on the border of Scrap Iron City. Someone else had to have seen the midgets even he and others had not.

He came to a stop next to a rice vendor's cart--the male vendor dressed in billowing red jacket with a circular collar and matching pants--cloth shoes. The rice vendor stared at Jack Bent before staring away again and perhaps thinking of something.


	11. Chapter 11

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

"Epitaph"

lyrics and music by _King Crimson _

Chapter 11—You Cannot Escape Disease

1.

He stopped running a while ago and did not feel like running any more today, and there was nothing else to do. Nothing else to do, he stared at this street-lamp here. It is a tall and thick pole set on a meter-square steel plate—the plate bolted to the concrete. The pole itself was about twenty meters high. Near the top was connected a horizontal bar with a halogen-arc florescent lights fixture at the end. Whenever the day darkened to night, the thing would turn on—blazingly bright. It was wired under the streets and sidewalks.

Under the city sidewalks, under buildings, powerful electrical cables connected street-lamp poles and buildings together, connected to wires that went beneath sidewalks and through the sewers. He had the idea that it must use an awful lot of electricity when turned on. But this city had electrical power to spare, lots of it. There were nuclear fusion generators a kilometer or so underground—something like that. Those nuke generators must be at least a few hundred years old, still working correctly.

And if a fusion generator stopped working correctly, the unofficial phrase for that sort of situation would be _Uh-oh_... Unofficially speaking, when that _Uh-oh _happened, Jack Bent would much prefer to be at least sixty miles away when the blast happened. And as the radioactive cloud from the explosion began to fall, he would much prefer to be a hundred and sixty miles away—and at least six stories underground somewhere. If Jack Bent knew a month ahead of time which reactor was getting ready to rapidly expand in a blaze of radioactive glory, he would likely not even be in the same landscape of the thing. Oh yeah, those underground nuclear power plants were very, very old fusion generators. Old fusion generators could blow up at any time.

It happened before, that _Uh-on _sort of situation. And it was just too likely that a nuclear sort of _Uh-oh _would happen again. Somewhere in Scrap Iron City, some unknown time in the future, another fusion generator would go _boom—_maybe killing a few thousand folks in the process, then giving skin and intestinal cancers to a lot of fleshies People died in the blast. And if they didn't die then, they would most certainly die at some unknown point in the first few months.

Skin cancer from nuclear radiation really sneaks up on a person. First, that sort of problem looks like acne and freckles. There would just be those little spots on the skin exposed to the sinister light of the nuclear explosion. Except, it sure as Hell isn't acne. And it sure as Hell wouldn't clear up. Then come the tumors—lumps on the skin. The lumps grow inward, conquering muscle and nerve tissue. Worse still was how those lumps had little bits of themselves travel along the bloodstream to spread throughout the rest of the body. Death was then a long and crippling process—and inevitable.

Then there were the various sorts of cancers that grew inside of victims, like those who so happened to drink some of the water contaminated with the nuclear radiation. The most likely such malady from drinking _Uh-oh _water would be intestinal cancer. It made people become weak and thin from not being able to eat. Then came the blood and vomit leaking from both ends of their digestive tract. Most died before their hair began to fall out and their bones became weak as dry twigs.

There was hope in the destruction of their bodies. A fleshie who catches symptoms early can go to a clinic and hope that there is a low-cost cyborg body available. Then the fleshie's brain would be chopped out of the dying body and placed within a solid and reliable cyborg body. That is, if the brain was not already developing little baby cancers of its own.

So some people died, so what? Lose a fusion reactor, lose some fleshies, everybody and everything is replacable. The Factory can usually just make some more parts to rebuild the nuclear reactor that went _Uh-oh. _Some Deck-men would get the commands to hire a few thousand more cyborgs or so to go way underground to replace the nuclear fusion reactors—usually rebuilding the thing in the same underground place where the previous one exploded. As for replacing the meat-bag humans that died in the catastrophe... Well, humans can replace themselves. Human reproduction happens all the time.

Jack Bent wondered why most of the older nuke plants hadn't gone _Uh-oh _yet. Maybe cyborgs or something kept those fusion reactors going—or not. Hmm... Or maybe they had? Maybe most every part of Scrap Iron City had already been nuked at least once. Then the holes just built over with concrete buildings and paved asphalt while the underground facilities were put back into place as if nobody was blown up—sealing the intense radioactivity down there as well. Or maybe they were just sealed up way underground under the assumption that the people of Scrap Iron City would be too _stupid _to operate them? Worse, it could be that maybe those nuclear power plants were _already_ malfunctioning and leaking radioactive coolant and other contaminants into the water supply. That would already be mixed up with whatever chemicals seeped from smokestack smoke or dripped from machine-buildings.

People drank city water because there wasn't exactly any other kind of water to drink. This wasn't like Ancient times--when a person could just mosey on into any old store and buy some bottled water from some place a thousand miles away. And maybe, that place a thousand miles away had cleaner water. Nah, there was just _one _source of water in Scrap Iron City. And it was water from the pipes, faucets, water tanks (and sewers) of The Factory. Of course there were little companies that just re-bottled Factory tap-water, slapped fancy labels onto the bottles, sold it to businessmen who thought they were getting cleaner water that was _maybe _like the water they drank up in Zalem. One such bottling corporation was the infamous Trench-Bloomcorporation--once a Motorball sponsor of a certain dark-haired female cyborg.

The Trench Bloom corporation gave the illusion of choice. All corporations ultimately just redistributed goods for one corporation: The Factory. All water, like all goods, ultimately came from just one source. And all a person could do was simply live with it.

Jack Bent drank the water. He drank it even though the city water always had a faint hint of chemical taste to it. He drank the mess even though he never got used to that chemical taste... That could likely be the reason why so many fleshies past a certain age began to have limbs rot off and be replaced with metal ones. Jack Bent was lucky so far in that he never had to have any of his limbs replaced just yet. Every so often, though, his left arm would go numb. And sometimes there would be little dark spots on his toes that wouldn't go away for a week or so. But Jack Bent took it down the mouth just like every other fleshie of Scrap Iron City—and them some. Just open the mouth and start sucking and swallowing whatever it is that the Factory has got for you.

So... Jack Bent had nowhere else to go at the moment. So why was he standing _here_ at all, out in the open and right under a street-lamp that would—no doubt—light up really brightly as soon as sunlight began turning to sunset? If he needed an excuse to be standing here, it was that this particular street-lamp was somewhat special because it was one of those streetlamps at the edge of Tire-Wire Alley. This was a point where Tire-Wire Alley ended and the deeper streets of Scrap Iron City began. He arrived here because of a fear-fled mad dash away from where Sieben fought her last--where some more of those odd-skinned midgets in sunset-colored coveralls were starting to climb up out of the sidewalk to _get _him. There were no such industrial mutants in sight. Then again, Tire-Wire Alley was the only place he saw those midget-things.

He really ought to leave this neighborhood before they find him. This border-neighborhood was really just a few blocks of storefront businesses along one street. None of the buildings were over three stories high—low buildings all around. If he _really _wanted to run and hide somewhere, Scrap Iron City would be the place! Scrap Iron City wasn't just some one-street border neighborhood. Scrap Iron City was a gigantic land of hard paved concrete and churning machine-buildings taller than mountains—all going along jumbled streets. Scrap Iron City is thousands and thousands of industrial cityscape and hundreds of thousands of neighborhoods with millions and millions of cyborgs and fleshies. One more meat-bag human going to live among the churning hundreds of millions of downtrodden working people would be very hard to find!

Yeah, those little bastards in the gold-colored coveralls wouldn't be able to find him then! Or would they? They had ways of finding him, because they always seemed to pop up out of the sidewalk at the worst of times just when he thought he was rid of them. So, should he leave Tire-Wire Alley?

He crossed his arms and kept staring up at that street-lamp. It was still daylight, the street-light not on. Also true was how a man on the run was best not served by standing out in broad daylight in a small border-neighborhood and be in the process of contemplating a dang street-lamp--dang-nabbit. At least he was not on the run from bounty hunters as far as he knew. None of the local television broadcasts had pictures his face next to amounts of money. Nor were Net-men spreading the word about him.

_Whir-r-r-r... _The sound was familiar. He turned to seea Netman, one of those silver-bodied robots with the funny heads and silvery bodies with waterproof keyboards attached. Also attached to the Netman's body--and not so funny--were miniature versions of weaponry one associates with the Wars of long ago. "Hey, Netman," said Jack Bent. He was starting to talk before he could stop himself. "If I told you about some problems, could you maybe help me out?"

To this melancholy questioning, the Net-man responded in its typically cheerful metal voice. "Greetings, citizen! You have a concern? Well, friend, you may have come to the correct unit—one of many friendly neighborhood Net-men! If the Factory can be of help largely depends upon the nature of the issue. If it pertains to the violation of the basic but generous laws of the Factory, then we shall gladly assist you! Please state the nature of the alleged problem."

Came the thought, _What the Hell am I doing! _He, Jack Bent--a career criminal--was talking to a _Net-man_, one of the robotic investigators of Factory law. If this robotic joker had known even half of one percent of what Jack Bent had done in his lifetime, then it would not be long before there were pictures of his head on television everywhere and a great big amount of money next to it. And if any of his criminal cohort-associates found out that Jack Bent was doing this, then they would likely lop off his head for free.

Ah, what the Hell... He'd already been beaten up too many times within the past twenty-four hours. Most of the hurts still gave twinges of pain. He was even bleeding a little right now. "Mind if I sit down?" he asked. The Net-man just gave a blank stare—its chubby rubbery face with no particular expression. Then again, Net-men never really had any sort of expressions on their chubby rubbery faces.

So he sat down on the sidewalk and put his hands on his knees. "It goes something like this... There is a really cute girl around here. Girl, woman... It's hard to tell. She's on the petite side, slender, looks like a living doll--has really big eyes and long pretty hair... That's the trouble. She's _too _cute and beautiful. Someone up in..." No, he would not say Zalem. "Someone in a certain special city wants her. First she wants the girl dead. Then she wants the girl's body. The girl is supposed to die according to a certain deal."

"You are referring to the destruction of an entire human organism--including the brain?" inquired the Net-man--still cheerful. Though talking of death and mutilation, this damned robot was still talking in that happy-go-lucky voice of a toilet-brush salesman talking up the benefits of good oral hygiene and clean toilets. "The destruction of a human brain is a Class A violation of Factory Law. Any information pertaining to individuals involved in such criminal action is cheerfully accepted and may lead to financial reward."

_Uh oh, _thought the career criminal, sitting here on this sidewalk. It wasn't a nuclear sort of _Uh-oh, _but it was an _Uh-oh _regarding where his life was going right now. He thought _Uh oh _ with fear and annoyance exactly because he was an individual involved in criminal action, exactly what they were talking about right now. "I'm just saying, though," he continued. "There is this girl... And some really bad people..."

What bad people? In the hundreds of years since big ol' Scrap Iron City was built, the criminal underground was built up right along with it. Stopping the most basic and obvious crimes were cyborg bounty hunters with insane melee weaponry and Net-men with heavy artillery not seen since the Wars. Yet you couldn't stop what you couldn't see, and the Netmen were too stupid to see or understand the concept of secret criminal organizations. Nah, all the robots of the Factory and all the other corporations were too busy worrying about levels of product output.

Then there were other ways to _make _Net-men stupid...or at least more stupid than they already were. Not too well-advertised was how the local band of gangsters and thugs had smart people working for them--people who learned how to use and build those Ancient devices called computers. Those smart people hired by criminals found out how to tap into the Net-men's data networks and tweak information about gangsters and such. Those smart hired people with the home-made computers would have been called _hackers _a thousand years back--before the world was the way it was now...

And those _hackers _had ways of never being caught. When all law enforcement is run by computer technology that has not changed for hundreds of years, of course they are going to be vulnerable to cybernetic attacks. Of all the millions of fleshies born, there was always the probability that a few dozen or so would grow up figuring out how to not only read, but also learning how to use computers. Then they learned how to use computers for the sake of screwing up Net-men.

"Forget about it," said Jack Bent--imagining a bored but too-intelligent computer hacker breaking into the Net-men's data networks—some kind of slight mutant with an inhumanly large head and lumpy fingers poised on keys. Such a mutant could be using the Net-man's camera-eyes to look at him right here, right now. "Forget I ever said anything about the girl being in trouble for her life."

"Very well, then!" cheered the Net-man as if none of this conversation happened. That was Net-men: emotions and minds small enough to stop and turn on a coin—digital coins. "Have a

good day! And remember, production comes before safety!" Then the metal-bodied robot-thing went trundling away."

_Very well... Hell, _thought Jack Bent. He remained sitting on this sidewalk even after the Net-man robot trundled itself away. Was there even a _point _to trying to rat himself out of the crime-thug's life he had wriggled his way into by now? Once in the game, you _stayed _in the game--until you were dead. The game went like this. You received a job—a dangerous, illegal job. Then you _did _the job and hoped that you were not maybe killed in the process, killed by way of bounty or by those who were trying to stop you. When the job was over and you still lived, they gave you another go-around—making you receive another job.

Becoming a career criminal was the end of the road for too many off-beat folks like him. And from there, doing wrong was like riding through that Motorball circuit. One of these days, he'd just have to drop the ball given to him in life. Thinking about this gave him..._one of those headaches_. _It hurt like Hell... It made him everything in a darkened reddish haze, and his left leg went numb. Dang it, he thought, collapsing to lie on his back as a spasm hit. He had the idea that some of those mutants were getting ready to come up out of the sidewalk.._

2.

Spasms, numbness, it could only mean something that fleshies feared worse than losing an arm or so. It was _brain damage. _Damaged body-parts could be replaced. Damaged parts of brains could not. He likely must have suffered brain damage during the course of the beatings dispensed to him. But he was fine before! This was him just walking along and trying to get along. Except now the _pain _was back_--for more. _

Nevertheless, there was no arguing with the personal agony and pain that gripped round his head--reached into his head and throughout himself. "_Augh,_" he grunted, staggering to his feet and holding his head, making him stagger to the left--because that side of his body suddenly wasn't working too well. And the vision out of his left eye took on that cracked-lens look, also becoming darkened. He must have bumped into a cyborg at some point because someone with metal hands was standing in front of him and yelling something--yelling about _Freakin' fleshies... _Just seconds into his agony, and he was already getting himself into more trouble. One thing about pain was how it could make seconds seem like minutes--stretched into the pain of eternity. Or maybe, this time, the pain would not go away at all. "_Ai-i-ia-ai-aiagh!_" screamed Jack Bent.

"A-a-augh, a-a-a-augh... _Ai-ia-a-aia-ia-a-agh...!_" He couldn't stop himself from screaming. Not only that, but the ringing sound from the right side of his head only seemed to make things worse. Though once familiar, the keening sound was now giving him agony. The agony and pain just blended into one another while his mind was being distorted with suffering.

What kind of sound was it? That keening sound was the sort of sound a person hears when in a dark and quiet room at night. Except it sure as heck wasn't dark and quiet right now. Everything was bright and loud and filling his head. The high-pitched keening began spreading over from the right side of his head and...taking over. Suddenly, Jack Bent..._couldn't take it any more! "Aia-ia-a-agh!_" _he screamed once more as he flopped onto his bac to writhe on the hard gritty paved surface. _

_Damn, he was fine a second ago! Now this was happening. For all knew, he was dying right now--his brain dying because of one blow too many from those cyborg thugs. There was the vague idea of a sliver of misplaced skull-bone lodged in his brain. Or maybe a tiny little blood vessel was slowly bleeding raw blood into part of his brain. He suddenly sat up and flopped back down again while the left side of his vision kept that fractured-lens sort of look and the right side of his head was full of that loud electric sound_.

_Whamp! _So lost was Jack Bent in his own pain that he did not see what just happened. Nearby, a section of the sidewalk flipped up and open--like the lid of a concrete dumpster. This revealed a darkness beneath again... And in that darkness were those mutant-midgets in gold-colored work-clothes. _"Saty-a-a-agrah!" _came the sound of a voice from below.

Somehow, Jack Bent heard that through_...the haze of Hellish pain in his head. _ He also knew that he ought to get the _Hell _away from here. Those midgets living beneath the sidewalk were likely going to _get _him if he did not move. But there was no getting away. The left side of his body was numbly cold with pain, and the right side was filled with that keening sound. "_Oblamah!" _came a cheer from the darkness. _"Satya-a-agraha!_"

'_Satyagraha' to you too, whatever that means...you mutant-bastards, _thought Jack Bent. Then most of the pain went away. The left side of his vision was still split up into that cracked-lens sort of look. Yet at least it was bearable now. He could get up.

So he did—though the pain was still enough to make him stagger a little. And there was still that keening sound...which _just kept getting louder the longer he stayed around those mutants. _

_Come over here_, came a thought in his head. Jack Bent managed to lift his head upon hearing something through that _ke-e-e-e-e _sound filling the right side of his hearing. The voice... It sounded dark and rasped slightly with damage, like the voice of a cyborg-man with a damaged torso. _Come over here. You must become the receiver of the ball. _

He looked up...and managed to stand up. It still felt as if the sidewalk was trying to take him down to Hell. Or the midgets were going to take him down to Hell. Hell, wasn't life on the ground enough like that? What the Hell...

_They want you. They want you to become the bearer of the ball. They want you to bear the ball that shall come around. It comes again and again. _

What the Hellindeed!Standing up, he looked forward to see something he had never seen before in his life. A rabbit, it was a freakin' six-foot bunny-rabbit. More exactly, it was a six-foot figure wearing a fuzzy bunny suit. The body was primarily covered up with fuzziness, but the face was bare: a grotesque cyborg-face of exposed metal, with bunny ears sticking up. That face was the worse: a gleaming metal skull-face to go with articulated metal jaws, silvery camera-eyes looking in this direction.

The eyes in the metal face began to glow. That glow became bright, like two little stars that were very close... No, there was something beyond the twin glow of those eyes. Staring into that florescent twin-eyed gaze was like peeking into something. Jack Bent had the idea that if he was to take hold of those metal bunny-ears like hand-holds and put his face right up against those eyes to look in, he'd see into another world...

_Come over, _went the six-foot cyborg-faced figure in the bunny suit. _We must return something to your current body. Become one with the circle. _

Jack Bent thought to himself, _What the Hell are you talking about? _He really wanted to turn himself right around and get as fast and as far away from that cyborg-creature in the bunny suit as possible. Except he couldn't. _Kee-e-e-e...!_ That high-pitched sound in his right ear suddenly became louder while the vision in his left eye became even worse. His senses were muffled.

He felt his left foot touch down onto the sidewalk. Another second, his..._right foot..._touched the sidewalk after the left. The_ left foot..._and the..._right foot..._and the..._left foot..._again, and again... _He was walking right in the direction of the cyborg-faced creature in the bunny suit--electromechanical face and all. The cyborg-creature in the bunny suit turned and walked into a doorway, Jack Bent following..._

_It was..._a darkened version of a certain restaurant again--or something like that. Most all the lights in the place were turned off, except for two of them. One of them was a spotlight shining on the raised stage at the far end of this room: a brassy gold-colored trumpet set atop a chair. The other spotlight shone down at the table that Jack Bent found himself approaching right now. That ringing in his right ear was still there, and the left side of his vision was still cold and blurry--but the pain was tolerable. It gave him more of an idea of the pain maybe becoming permanent. He could not worry about that now, though.

_You will sit down now, _said the cyborg man-creature in the bunny suit. Or did Jack Bent _imagine _that the cyborg-creature in the bunny suit said it? Anyway, the curly haired man found himself sitting down in a seat set before a circular wooden table. Jack Bent had the impression that something was very, very important about the fact that the table was circular. He just couldn't quite get it at the time.

That cyborg-faced man-creature in the bunny suit was already sitting down--sitting stiff-backed, metal ears pointed up. Come to think of it, those robotic ears sort of resembled insect-like ears instead of rabbit ones. Staring into those eyes also brought about _This world dies tonight, _declared the cyborg-faced man-creature in the bunny suit. He--or it--then raised the right arm to touch something that was suddenly in the middle of the table. A cotton-muffed hand touched rounded metal.

The object atop the table had a very familiar look to it. At least, the appearance was familiar to most anyone who lived around a certain border-neighborhood of Scrap Iron City. It was a sphere roughly the size of a head. There were also fist-sized stubby projections extending out from the sphere, big nubs resembling large cleats. It was these large cleat-like projections that kept the object from rolling around on the table. To Jack Bent's eyes, it looked like the prime object of the sport Motorball. He also had the idea that it was actually _not _a Motorball ball: it only _looked _like a Motorball. There was something else about the object that wasn't quite right—something very odd

_You cannot run from the returning truth, _invoked the cyborg-creature in the bunny suit. _An entity can only run with the truth. _The cyborg-creature then raised one of those muff-covered hands to pat the Motorball object atop the table. _This is the truth, to go around, go around..._

The Hell it is! Somehow, Jack Bent was then able to get himself up and away from the seat. He did not get far. That keening sound in his right ear..._overcame the rest of his head. That, and the vision in his left eye was almost totally eliminated by now. One side of him deaf, the other side nearly blind, he really was in a world of pain and suffering. _

_Then those mutant-midgets in the gold-colored coveralls stepped out of the darkness. One of them now had the Motorball object. Five other midgets took various holds of Jack Bent: one holding his right arm, another holding the left arm, two more for his legs, and one held his head. That midget in the gold coveralls twisted and shoved the Motorball object into Jack Bent's guts. They then began to drag him away, his blood smearing along the grimy floor..._

_Everything was seen through a haze of pain and dizziness. Above was that old infinite darkness again... No, there was a spotlight shining down from above--even if the glare of the actual light-fixture itself was not visible. There had to be light coming from somewhere because it illuminated the head of the blurry and labcoat-wearing figure above him. One of the blurry figure's tools raised up. Bwe-e-e-e-e...! _

_Oh no, not again, came the thought. The blurry figure moved the tool away and out of sight--towards the abdomen--the high-pitched squeal of the tool moving with it. Then the sound of the tool lowered in pitch when it began cutting. This made for far too much pain--blacking out..._

_The man..._was standing on the sidewalk. He swayed on his feet, and there was a lost and drunken sort of look on his face. Yet it was not drink that made for that sway in his stance. It was instead the result of far too much pain filling his midsection. There was a feeling of being struck in the abdomen and consuming something terrible.

"Hey guy! Watch out!" complained a tall cyborg-man in expensive business clothes. Though his business suit and pants covered most all of his body, shoes on his feet and gloves on his hands, there were nevertheless glimpses of metal at the wrists. He was apparently one of those wealthy sorts involved with sports: not playing the sports themselves. It was this expensively clad figure that brushed past the curly haired man swaying on the sidewalk.

_Can't watch out, _thought the man... What was his name again? Hmmph... Jack Bent, that was it--or something. And if his own name was hard enough, trying to remember where he was became even harder. All that he knew at the moment was that he was standing on a city sidewalk and everything was swaying.

He tried saying it through the swirling nausea and feeling filling him. He tried to take in a deeper breath to talk... Something was very wrong, because it was hard for him to inhale air past a certain point. Worse still was how too deep a breath put pain in his midsection. That feeling of something being wrong only made things feel worse still. _Can't watch...out..._

The curly haired man in overpriced slacks and tee-shirt just knew was that something was very wrong inside of him. _"_Like, watch where you're going!" exclaimed a female cyborg--a pink-haired female figure dressed in a tight-fitting dress. The skirt portion barely covered her hips, and the top clung like skin to her electromechanical female body—skin that her metal self didn't have. "_Ew!_ And quit eyeing me like I'm one of those fleshie sluts! Perv!"

_Help me, _he thought and tried to say. Except it came out something like _Elp-rip _or something. The pain in his midsection also worsened upon trying to talk. It was also an effort to try focusing enough to talk as well. So he did not try talking anymore. _Help... _He needed a way out.


	12. Chapter 12

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

"Epitaph"

lyrics and music by _King Crimson _

Chapter 12—Madness from Machinery

1.

In an entire neighborhood of people, in _this _neighborhood, no one could help him—no one but himself. That was because his problem was inside himself and absorbed within. And there was no getting out of himself what was inside. From the flesh of his toes to the top of his brain and throughout all his organs, throughout his blood, the man was _contaminated. _Worse still was how there was no name for the contamination inside himself.

Worse still was how the _contamination _made it almost impossible to talk. It was messing up the soft matter of his brain and made it very difficult for his mind to work. First, he was feeling pain and aches inside and throughout himself. Now he was feeling numbness mixed in with that pain. It was as if Jack Bent was trapped inside his own private little version of Hell.

So lost in a sickening and agonizing world of his own pain that Jack Bent had the vague notion of maybe stopping and lying down. Yeah, he'd just lie down on this hard city sidewalk all around. And there he would lie, not getting up ever again. Just let the contamination do its dark thing to kill him. He was dying inside.

Still, the curly haired man in tee shirt and slacks did his best to keep walking along. A strain of effort let him put his numb left foot weakly forward. The numb right foot then touched down... Not that Jack Bent could feel it as he staggered along. It was because there was a distant feeling of pressure somewhere around his ankles. The pain and sickness, it had already taken over both hands and feet. The pain was eventually going to crawl through the numbness of arms and hands, eventually getting up to his head. _Swish…_

_Who-o-o, whoops! _He nearly fell over that time. Thank goodness the sidewalks were wider nowadays--to accommodate the larger cyborgs.

Now it was accommodating an especially tall and painfully lost fleshie male, lost in his own pain. _Somebody help me out..._ He instead mumbled something because speaking properly wasn't possible at the moment. Walking along this wide sidewalk only made for the more expensively dressed cyborg-men just walking past him. It was getting to be late afternoon, when all the big rich Motorball executives dealt with the big rich Factory cyborgs. He couldn't ask them for help. His head was just so full of pain...

It therefore made things easier for the cyborgs in business-clothes--those who were able to go right past him. They didn't want to deal with common street-trash like him, be the trash with a body of flesh or metal. The fact that the curly haired man was swaying and staggering meant that he must be a _drug-junkie _chunk of street-trash. It could have been beer…or that cheap and slightly toxic swill of leftover liquid that counted for "beer" among the dirt-poor masses of Scrap Iron City. Not that the curly haired man could hear them through the rumbling pain in his head, but some of those Motorball businessmen passing by also gave him brutally insulting words in passing.

And he kept walking in one direction because of the vague idea that there was some kind of help at one far end of this street. His steps barely carried him onward. Now, the awful, sickening nightmarish pain in his midsection only hurt worse. A cough, and there were dark spatters mixed with the sprayed flecks of saliva from his mouth. His mind wandered and wondered about—a his mind was so dizzied and incoherent with pain and suffering that it put him in an altered state of consciousness. He was _delirious, and…all sorts _of odd thoughts and imaginings were drifting through his head. They weren't even in words, just jumbled images of places and things. Things…_sort of went here and there, places made of ideas--and there was singing or something... _

Most of the lights were turned down or shut off completely, leaving most of the many patrons sitting in the darkness. This was one of those places where people went to hear some original and important music. And if lucky, maybe an especially old song would be performed--songs from ancient times. The musicians on the raised stage looked ready for that sort of thing. It was actually a band made entirely up of fleshies: not a single cyborg among them. One bearded man was sitting behind a drum-set and beating out a slow drum-beat, occasionally hitting the cymbal at the right points to make for a _clash-h-h _sound. A tall, blonde-haired woman in summer dress and leather boots stood with guitar and was strumming out a back-melody. There was even someone at a battered analog device--something known as a "piano." As the drummer played out the slow and funeral-like drum-beat, the tall blonde female guitarist playing the back-melody, along with the piano going.

Then came the male vocalist. He took to the microphone and began to croon sing.. It was the voice of a dark and troubled man in work-clothes and a wild head of hair. Some of the lyrics seemed far too troubling and close to some kind of truth.

_The wa-a-a-all on which the prophets wrote, _

_...is crack-ing...at the seams._

_U-u-upon the instruments of death,_

_...the sunlight, widely gleams._

_When _every_ ma-a-an...is torn apart,_

_...with _nightmares..._and with dreams_

_Will no one lay the _laurel_ wreath_

_...as silence_

drowns the scre-e-eams!

Confusion…_will be my epitaph_

_If we make it, we can sit back and laugh..._

_...But I fear, tomorrow I'll be crying._

_...But I fear, tomorrow I'll _be...cry-y-ying...!

"I don't know too much about karma myself. At least, I know that karma is a force in this world that keeps too many things from going wrong," said Mr. Okotonz, speaking to the customer standing on the other side of the counter. This was happening here in his shop, and this big bodied cyborg with swarthy face was sitting atop his reinforced alloyed stool. "Maybe my problem is how my interests are all over the place instead of concentrating on one thing at a time. An ancient saying goes, 'Jack of all trades, master of none.'"

"Still, that idea of some kind of force keeping things at least a little bit decent is a nice and comfortable idea. You've probably heard as much history about this world as I have. The world was a better place almost a thousand years ago, maybe because the world was ruled from the ground, maybe because there were a heck of a lot _more _jobs and people paid to keep everyone safe and healthy. You know... There used to be people called the 'police' to keep criminals from doing wrong--at least one member of the police for every sixty people. Now it's just some bounty hunters.

"And get this. There were other kinds of people paid to keep fleshies healthy. Tell me if you've heard about 'rescue workers.' Rescue workers… You know? Those people in Ancient times who were paid to save injured fleshies and put water on fires? Would you believe the rich people back then paid groups of people to sit around and wait until there were fires to put out? I read that it cost a lot of credits to do that.

"Hey, don't give me that sort of look. I don't make this stuff up! You're laughing now... But that's the way they did things in those old days. Back then, there was no big floating city in the sky, everybody lived on the ground, and the rich people had to do _something _for the people. This land was covered with great big green fields and places full of trees with only some deserts. Now what do we have? _Hmmph_..."

At this point, he looked past the current customer--looking to the left to stare out the big barred picture-window that gave a view of the city street out there. "Killer bounty hunters and those goofy Deck-men, that's all we get from Zalem for working so hard all the time. That's all that keeps things barely decent--along with karma."

He then stopped looking outside, returned his eye-focus to the customer. "Here's a little something to talk about. Ever get the idea that there's something _else _to go with karma? So there's this invisible quantity that sort of keeps things barely decent in the universe. But... Who--or _what--_enforces karma? I don't care how mystical and powerful a force is. There has to be _someone _or _something _to make sure that even mystical forces are kept in check in this broken-down rotten world of ours.

"I don't know... Maybe they're invisible, those people or creatures that maintain karma. They must be hard workers or something. Who knows? What if they were invisible and only certain people could see them? Or it could be that we sometimes _do _see them--though our subconscious blocks them out. Or maybe... Maybe seeing them is a sign of something going wrong. It's like those ancient cities I just told you about, with the 'police' and those firefighter-people paid to keep things neat. You only really saw firefighters and the police when something was wrong.

"So what about those new kinds of mutants people are talking about? People are starting to see them pop up from the ground. Maybe they're from the same place that karma really comes from or something. Yeah buddy, something else _has _to be out there and keeping us from becoming too self-destructive—because those Deckmen are just robotic idiots with chunks of human brain-matter to help them talk. I'm guessing it wouldn't be long when some Deckmen start being blown up at random.

"But...! Here are some question marks for you—great big questions. Where the _hell _did those little bastards _really _come from? No, wait… Here's a good one: W_hy _are they here? It could mean that something must really be going wrong, them being here. Almost nobody saw them before. And anybody who did was just called crazy. I saw a pack of those short guys running around too. Hey, don't give me that look... Hmmph! I see you have that sort of _I-don't-believe-a-thing-you're-saying _look to your face. Karma is all in the books, I tell ya! It's like you think that the stuff in the books is just some made-up mess made up by some guys high on some new kinds of drugs or something. You also have the sort of look of someone who doesn't believe anything unless it's as real as the credit chips in your wallet.

"Well, let me tell you... There was this scientist who got out of Zalem, see. Rumor has it that he sort of left on his own before something especially rotten happened to him. You know Zalem, always ready to take somebody's brain for no good reason. Anyway, that scientist-guy was starting to fool around with karma. By now, anybody who can read knows something about nanotechnology...which, by the way, was another part of his research. The guy liked fooling around with the stuff of reality by using that nanotechnology stuff. So if that guy who pretty much reinvented an ancient technology is fooling around with karma..."

At this point in his own monologue, Mr. Okotonz shook his head. It was too terrible to talk about, let alone consider. "I don't want to know what's going to happen—if it _didn't _happen already! It'll just happen again, too—something _bad_."

"Hey buddy... You okay there?" asked a big broad cyborg-man in blue work-clothes. He was likely a cyborg Factory worker down at some kind of warehouse. "You're looking a little bit on the _lost _side. Know what I mean? Hey-_hey! _Can you _hear me _at all, buddy?"

The _buddy _in question right now was Jack Bent. Or it was the thing that was once Jack Bent. He was standing there and swaying slightly side-to-side. The look on his face was a slightly angry one even though his eyes were generally glazed over. That big broad cyborg-man standing nearby was barely even heard. No... It was as if the figure of Jack Bent was seeing and hearing into another world.

"Listen, buddy... If it's drugs you've been messin' around with, I know it ain't my business. Still... I'm looking at your arms. You're still a fleshie--no metal parts, right? I'll tell ya what's wrong with that. Some of those drugs out there will mess up your insides early. Then you'd _really_ have to become a cyborg before your time. I know 'cause I used to fool around with all kinds of junk. And then there's all that chemical junk in the air and water... Health clinic people told me all about it. They know what they're talking about, too. Both kidneys were messed up, and my liver was all full of lumpy cancers. Nasty, nasty... If I didn't become a cyborg, my brain would've been full of that cancer-stuff. Is your brainokay?"

Nope, Jack Bent was not home right now! He was not there at all. There was just the figure of a curly haired man in slacks and tee shirt. Something seemed wrong with his abdomen, too... Was that a _blood _stain? This was a cause for concern, this blood from an unknown injry

"What the Hell? You been stabbed or something, guy?" The cyborg-man tried waving his arms... "Hello! Hello? Ah, forget it," he finally said. Then the cyborg-man put his metal hands in his pockets and began to walk away. One more look back was all that he gave Jack Bent before moving on. A person could only worry so much. Well, anyway... A man couldn't save the world. He had to look out for his family and friends--as best he could.

_Help me! _And Jack Bent remained standing there, swaying there. Or it was what was left of Jack Bent after _they _got him. _Them, _those muscular midgets in the gold-colored coveralls, they had _gotten _him and left him this way. No more worries, no more pain, no more fear...or strength or hope, either. There was just that shell of a person.

If one stared, one saw that the thing once known as Jack Bent was now with a peculiar facial expression that indicated a person was looking slack-jawed because he or she was..._looking and listening to something else. _Whatever it was that was seen through those eyes and into that other place, those passing by did not know. (_Help me, please!_)

"Hello there. What's gotten into you?" asked one especially large-headed male cyborg. There was an air of intelligence that shone through his eyes. He could see that something was most certainly wrong. "So really, what has _gotten _into you?"

"_Aharg...a-a-at..." _came the mumbled response from the thing that was once Jack BentThat, or something, was as much of a response as anyone was going to get out of the shell of a person. That was because the thing inside made hi m something else--had changed his mind. _Elkric... _Then the Jack Bent-thing walked away.

"Fine by me, guy!" said the large-headed cyborg. "Just asking, that's all. A fellow citizen of Scrap Iron City, and you can't even give enough kindness to answer a few questions. It doesn't cost anything, you know... Whatever, guy! See you around."

"_Elkr-r-r-r..."_ answered the thing that was once Jack Bent. The destination was actually not too far from here. Just stagger-walk on... While still going, he looked to his right—looked beyond this world and into another. Then it kept going.

…

2.

That big low-colored sun cast everything in glowing tones—the light glowing between the jagged blocky shapes of buildings to soften the edges of everything. As the dying light of the city day continued passing into night, winds blew across and howled. It could have been the buildings that made for most of the local landscape being shadowy. Except, something was wrong. Some of those shadows were a great deal darker than they should have been--especially the alleyways. One particular alley looked like an opening into the darkest night ever, a darkness that was darker than the universe. No one passed by along the sidewalk.

That was because there was no one around this part of Tire-Wire Alley. At least there was no one alive--not cyborg, not fleshie, and no mutants at all. For a part of a border-town neighborhood that was supposed to have an awful lot of bustling activity so close to night-time, there was little to none now. It was just so quiet along these sidewalks and buildings. There _had _been a lot of people around here recently: trash blowing along on howling sunset winds, along with recently parked trucks. _Whamp-p-p..._came the distant echo of a sound.

Someone was coming right now. After the sound of a building's front door being _blasted _open, there was the sight of two girls running. They were wearing denim outfits more befitting bikers out of centuries ago: both wearing tight-fitting jeans and elastic tops that were barely shirts at all, the tops leaving their vaguely muscular abdomens bare, synth-leather jackets worn over their shoulders and backs. Their midget-sized boots thudded out their rapid-fire pace. One of them was carrying something that trailed long white silkiness.

It was a third girl that they were carrying--Kyrie. Though moving at an incredibly fast pace, the sleeping girl seemed not to mind at all. Whatever caused her to become unconscious must have been especially severe. A closer look would reveal that her face had taken on a sort of blushing complexion--a contrast to her moonlight-pale hair.

They kept running onward without paying much attention to the sudden lack of people walking along these sidewalks. What mattered to them was running, moving fast. Anything that could pop out suddenly and make for a crash, they did not care. There was a robotic _r-r-roar _from way back there. So they kept running.

Then something did pop out at them. Blocks ahead, part of a sidewalk _flipped _upwards like the lid of a box. One fleshie arm reached up to _slap _one hand atop the sidewalk. Then the _other _hand took hold. Something or someone was climbing up from below.

The figure of a man sort of flopped the rest of itself onto the top of the sidewalk. A blink of less than a second, and the flipped-open section of sidewalk disappeared, and it was as if the sidewalk never opened up at all--except for there being the thing that climbed up out of the

The thing that was once Jack Bent knew that they were coming. It was because the thing had the ability to see and hear into _another place. _That figure was also seeing things that were there...yet also _not_ really there, listening to the collective whispers and glimpses of knowledge coming into the head. That knowledge _meant _things…

Then came the gynoids, those robotic girls who could pass for human. One of them was an unconscious Kyrie.

Both of them stopped on seeing a swaying figure standing at the mouth of.--of course--an alleyway. One of the figure's arm grotesquely jerked _up_ in a vague form of greeting. Only after that arm made a "get-over-here" gesture did the twins understand.

They both saw it as a safe place to go. After all, where _else_ was there to go--besides running and going onward? Any being with a living brain would have felt that something was wrong with an alleyway that looked darker than the universe. Since the gynoids' brains were actually computer chips, and they were just robots designed to look and act like human girls, they did not have that sense of something going wrong. To their eyes, it just looked like a typically shadowy alley. Except, when they tried to run past, the darkness swallowed them up. _Whamp-p-p! _The disappearance was followed by the sound of a large metal door or gate being shut.

And that was it. There was no longer the sound of twin artificial girls running and carrying Kyrie. Matching it was a sudden-passing sort of breeze. Then came a sort of strange and muffling sort of quiet stop . The breeze stopped. All little bits of blown trash or torn cloth just sort of fluttered to a stop. It was as if the world was waiting. The..._flash of white light glared out everything. Everything was suddenly wiped out with glaring white. Of course there was not enough time to scream._

_The sound of a roaring rumble above awoke her from her stunned sleepiness. For just a moment, she had stopped thinking. It was as if she was dead for that time. But if she was not dead, then what was this?_

_Please help me, somebody! I can't move... Everything hurts... It hurts all over! Everything feels so wrong with me, all over. Someone please..._

She heard everything--though her hearing felt oddly muffled. More importantly, she was doing her exhausted best to keep herself alive. Everything just felt so weak and far away... The girl was aware of being carried somewhere. Yet that was almost not an important fact at all--because she was still trying to stay alive and thinking.

It was becoming hard to...stay alive and thinking. It could have been because--for just a moment--the girl dropped her concentration. And for that moment, there was a minute idea of simply surrendering her life. It would not at all be difficult. All that the girl had to do was relax and give in. Just give in to the numbness that had already conquered the rest of herself. This was her trapped in her own head, very nearly deaf and barely alive. Inside her head... She was barely able to keep herself thinking.

And for moments...things stopped. Her life—if she had one—was a weak flutter that...every so often...stopped... Then it tried to keep beating. It was a serious effort and took almost all of her severely reduced strength to pull air into her lungs. It was an intense effort to breathe.

Though her eyes were closed, she was very conscious of everything. It actually was a very terrible for Kyrie at the time because of that: being conscious, yet her entire body being as if she was unconscious...and dying. It took a conscious effort to keep herself from dropping off into death.

_Swish...whoomph!_ The girl felt herself falling. Though she could not see anything, the girl could hear wind rushing in her half-deafened ears and feel her hair fluttering as she fell. Something struck her left cheek… It felt like a floor. And there she laid—because she could not move.

There was the sound of a door opening nearby, and it now felt as if someone dropped her. Then came the sound of what could have been the sound of her own self, herslf falling to a hard surface. Was it the sound of herself?

_Like, I'm not dead! So somebody help me out! That person who carried me...! Someone carried me. Listen, please. I... I'm still here. I just can't move or talk, that's all! So don't treat me like a corpse! I'm still a person. Please..._

Then it was as if someone could hear her thoughts. Something grabbed her by the hair first. Then big rough hands caressed her cheeks, and she felt herself being lifted upwards--being carried. Yes, someone had picked her up! Now, feeling was returning to her cheeks and face. Yet her body still felt numb.

"So _there _you are!" said a man's voice. "I just _knew _that flan-eating psycho wouldn't take you out of the equations just yet. Well, I saw your jaw moving. Why are you bothering to try talking? How in _tarnation _could you talk if you don't have a throat right now or a decent power supply? Ah, just screw it... Since your brain's not real, you wouldn't need blood going through the noggin. Hey… You still listening in there?"

Suddenly, the girl felt and saw that her right eyelid was open--the eyelid of her good eye. The other eye was damaged. Now she could see things. This was true even if everything did look dark.

The girl had the idea of there being a low ceiling that was primarily made up of wires—like parts of a grand machine. Some of those wires had parts that glowed like stars in a sky. Then the man holding her turned her around. There were some strands of her own hair in her eyes... "Sorry about that, cutie-pie," he said, some of his fingers brushing aside lengths and strands.

About the man, he was someone with a tanned complexion, looking vaguely athletic, a wild head of dark curly hair. She also saw that his shoulders were clad in sky-blue--a sky-blue sort of tee-shirt. His head and shoulders were also framed with a light shining down on him. Except... There was no spotlight visible above. Also odd was how he was able to move her around so easily. Then the girl remembered being hurt very badly. Something hurt her neck…

_Like_... _Oh my gosh! _Suddenly, her mouth began moving--even though no words were coming out. _ I don't want to die! You've gotta help me! Take me back! She's... She's all alone! And I'm dead!_

"Hey, toots!" exclaimed the man in sky-blue clothing, watching her mouth move and seeing a worried look on her face. "Don't you worry your pretty head about this... _Heh, heh_... Get it? Was my comment over your head? Sorry about that one too! Anyway, did you hear that rumbling? We'll get back to business pretty soon. Hmmph... Well, first thing we have to do is wait for the alleged radiation levels to go down above-ground. Well, it's both sooner and later at the same time. Time? The inversion already happened, and I made sure that it didn't get to go around again. It can't--not without all the bowls in neat rows.

"But guess the heck what? I'm taking you out of the equation and using for my own dang-on pawn. I'll use anyone else I can, too. Do you _know _how annoying it is to have your stomach being used for the sack of a device for cosmic obliteration? Well, they should've looked in the fridge before taking _me _away! Feh, they're trying to take _me _off the shelf. They've got some nerve!" He turned around the head and tucked it underneath his right arm. "Yeah, and we'll screw up and around with old boy Nova's plans pretty darned twistily--until they're more twisted than a pretzel in a blender, in a house trapped in a tornado on a spinning planet. Cheap joker didn't even bother to build an entire planet, either... We'll show 'em what for!" Then he walked in one direction in this darkened place—going towards a strange machine to be used to help the girl.


	13. Chapter 13

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

"Close Your Eyes; You Can Be a Space Captain"

lyrics by The Legendary Pink Dots

vocal by Edward Ka Spel

Chapter 13—And Somebody Else

1.

_Where did I go? I don't know. Something really bad happened to me. Maybe I should be dead Because... Is this what dead people feel like? But, if my brain still works, I'm still thinking, it must mean something. _

_What does it mean? _Thinking that, the girl was just barely aware of anything—emerging from a prolonged darkness of unconsciousness. Something was done to her to make her mind go dark for a while…. She felt a bit strange as her sense of self was beginning to come back. Now the girl was feeling herself awaken again. It was everything getting started. This was the rekindling of the light in her mind. Memories were coming quickly back…

She remembered her name. And she remembered that she was not human. Yet the replicate-girl preferred to think of herself that way, pretending to be "human"—even if she was just a very complicated machine, made by machines. Though her body from the neck down had the look of tight-fitting feminine armor, it was thoroughly robotic inside. As for her face, it was made of synthetic flesh. For the long dark hair flowing from her scalp, it was long polymer strands.

Unlike other replicates, all of them with short-cut hair, Sieben's own hair was long and luxurious, cascading midway down her back when she let it lay loose. It was one more personal reason why Sieben was unlike all the other replicates of Gally, along with her stronger sense of young womanhood and care for others. Sieben was the opposite of Sechs—the nightmarish replicate seeking dominance, mastery and destructionof all other replicates.

Now that Sieben knew who she was, there came awareness of her body and herself. Something had happened to her. What was it? It was something terrible. It was a nightmare that happened. There was only one nightmare she knew of, a walking nightmare...

Sechs happened! "_No-o-o!_" shrieked the girl, frightened out of her dazed state tosit up on the table, her big dark eyes popping open. Her robotic hands went to feel for her own neck—a slender neck with parts reminiscent of human neck muscles, long metal parts, her throat made of a segmented tube. The last thing the replicate-girl remembered was the feeling of her own neck being broken apart when Sechs killed her. That feeling of destruction was also matched with becoming painfully separated from her own body. And maybe it could happen again—a hand to reach out to take her head again... Someone was here!

Sieben hopped off of the table, nearly slipped when her bare metal feet hit the hard floor. Her feet were bare because the rest of her was also without clothing, not that there was anything to hide but shaped sections of metal. She ducked to kneel behind the raised and padded work-table illuminated by the spotlight. The replicate-girl did not want to be killed again—a terrible image of a huge-armed metal nightmare leaping out from the darkness to _get _her...!

Still ducking, a worried look on her synthetic face, the replicate-girl looked around. Her long dark silky hair barely making whispers of sound as she quick-turned her head left, then right and looking around this place in darkness. And the darkness beyond the light of this table made it very difficult to see.

Other than the long and padded work-table illuminated by a spotlight, there seemed to be almost no light here. Sieben held her breathing and looked around. Because her insides were completely robotic, her brain a semi-electronic bio-chip, the replicate-girl did not need to breathe. She only breathed for the sake of helping keep her internal components cooled and to pass air through her throat-component for the sake of speaking. Speaking was something she would _not _do right now. The thing to do was duck behind here very, very quietly.

Sieben heard wind. It was a wind in surrounding darkness. Funny, she never really noticed it before, since it was just background-sound. Now it seemed to be one of the most frightening thing about this place since it could cover up the sound of that Sechs-replicate. Something could step out of the darkness beyond the light shining on this work-table...

_Fwick! Oh no! _Still kneeling, the replicate-girl pivoted around. It was because a light flashed on behind her—becoming a steady glow. Another spotlight had come on. Now it was shining on a stranger, a curly haired man dressed in slacks and blue tee-shirt, a slightly muscular man dressed in tee shirt and slacks. He seemed to be human—a fleshie—as his bared arms and neck were flesh.

Sieben worried less about fleshies than she did about cyborgs or other replicates. Cyborgs were more likely to be physically brave and reckless because a cyborg's body parts could be easily replaced. Fleshie body parts, they were swapped out with metal parts—or made cyborgs. All the same, she had to be careful.

"_Wa-hey-y-y!_" cheered the curly haired man in tee-shirt and slacks, the one Sieben ducked from. He saw the top of the replicate-girl's dark-haired head pop up from hiding, her big eyes open and staring, "There's nothing here that is going to hurt you—because I _said _so. This here space is _my _domain—my own little pocket of reality. And, _dude-ette, _it took a lo-o-ong time for me to make it, let me tell you! When we return to the city, _then _you can worry. Not now, though."

Sieben carefully stood up. And she noticed that, as she stood, a portion of spotlight seemed to be shining on herself as well. But how...? Where was the light coming from? She looked up into the darkness and saw no apparent source of light. It was coming from nowhere...

What a strange place this is, then. Strange, but it was friendly—like that man. In her mind was the idea that the man could be trusted. It also seemed as if he was the one responsible for her being repaired. "Okay," she voiced. "So, like... Who are you? What _is _this place?"

She saw a worried look flashed across the man's face as he..._blurred a little. His voice changed as well. What's going on, came the thought. What did I say?_

_"The breeze...speaks beyond itself. Dream into the truth. Everything you can think of is true. Beyond the darkness of one universe, ghosts made real, going beyond the... The breeze blows. Aia-a-aia-a-agh...!" He collapsed to kneel on one knees, and the wind began to how-w-wl "No!" exclaimed the man as..._everything returned to normal.

"Like... What just happened!" voiced Sieben, feeling a little dizzy. Everything had been becoming blurry and disorienting for a while. It eventually stopped with him standing there with both hands on his head as if having a mind-twisting headache. "Could you please _not _ask questions like that?" asked the man. "Any time anybody asks me about this place, it makes me _think _about it. The only way to keep it existing is to take it for granted. It's like breathing...or swallowing food. If you _think _about it, it becomes trouble. So don't make me think about it, okay?

"Now... You're asking me, what is this place? If you want something that even comes close to a real answer, this place is nowhere—and no-when. _Where _this place is also happens to be connected to _when _this place is. The bigger question would be _how _this place is. And whenever I get hit with a question like that, I find it really, _really _hard to keep things normal here. This is just my little pocket of reality. It took a _Hell _of a lot of trouble to set up stuff like karma and normal light, too. I had to steal some machinery from Doc Nova's lab to do this.

"Even with machinery running, it _still _takes effort to keep this place seeming 'real.' And the only way I can keep it 'real' and normal is by thinking of it that way. The machinery that maintains the fabric of reality within this room partially runs on my thoughts. Whenever someone asks me to think too hard about this place, though, things can get a little blurry. And if I was to fall asleep, just maybe this room wouldn't exist for a little while. So please don't ask about how this room exists until we get back to the border town."

"Are we going back to the border town?" asked Sieben. "Good! I wanna get back to Kyrie! I hope she's okay..."

"Well, we'll just have to go and see," said the curly haired man. "Except it might not be _your _Kyrie you have in mind. Yeah, and there's another _me _probably walking around, too. By the way, if you want to call me by a name, I'm Jack Bent."

"Jack Bent?" asked Sieben. Hanging around the city, she had heard the name before in a bar somewhere. That bar was in a grittier part of town. Then again, there were an awful lot of gritty parts of town. Wasn't he some kind of criminal?

"Now follow me very carefully," he added. That said, the curly haired man in tee shirt and slacks turned to face the surrounding darkness. He walked into it. Now the glow of the spotlight shining down on him indirectly illuminated a wall that seemed to be made of rusty metal blocks. Then came a doorway. Opened up, wonderful golden sunset-colored sunlight shone through.

It looked...beautiful. There was sunset-colored light coming from the open door, warm and golden. The sunset-colored glow also lit up the rest of the room—which turned out to actually be just the size of a living room. Sieben also saw that the rest of the walls were made of rusty metal blocks, the floor made of square ceramic tiles. The low ceiling had all kinds of wires and parts loose. But if the ceiling just had wires and machine-parts, where did that spotlight coming from?

"Please come on," said Jack Bent. "I really don't know how long I can keep the door between here and _there _open. It could close up, and we could be stuck here for at least three thousand years."

Sieben moved to follow. There was something about the light coming from the open doorway that made her feel much better. Somehow, being in this dark place was giving her a low and troubled sort of feeling to begin with—the feeling lifted on seeing that light. Jack Bent disappeared into the doorway..._disappeared_. Sieben tried to stop and go back—but found that..._the way back was gone. Sunset-colored blurs overcame her...and then..._

A blink of her eyes, the replicate-girl was standing on a carpeted floor--swaying on her feet. She regained her balance after getting readjusted to things—and realizing that she was now wearing footwear. In fact, the replicate-girl now had on a full set of clothing.

A look down revealed that it was a neat pair of light footwear, along with tight-fitting jeans and a sleeveless top that left her arms bare. It was an outfit that clung to her physique, showing off the shape of her body without exposing it. Where did this outfit come from? It wasn't that Sieben would have preferred to walk around naked—as if there was much to hide. Still, between Jack Bent's place and appearing here, the clothes had come from somewhere.

This place, it looked like a typical bar. There were circular tables placed throughout this main room, tables made of polished wood—which must be expensive. At the far end, the square windows high up on the brick wall let in that sunset-colored light. The drinking bar was to her right. Then came the rhythmic sounds of music.

She turned around. There was a raised stage behind her, three men standing and sitting: one standing at a microphone-stand, a second behind some synthesizers, and a third one with an electronic guitar. "Hey there! Come have a seat," shouted Jack Bent, speaking loudly above the beginnings of the music. "The show has just begun--again!" He gave a _come over here _sort of gesture with his right arm. Sieben remembered that gesture. Someone made that gesture somewhere else before she entered a dark place... It made her shudder.

All the same, she sat down in the seat, thighs together, hands lightly on her knees, feeling a little bit shaky as she was still getting readjusted to being in her body again. Then she crossed her legs. A toss of her head and a gentle motion of her left hand, she got some hair away from her eyes.

The rhythm, gentle drums and synthesizer of the music was warming up—the occasional shake sound of maracas. It went on for another second, then man at the microphone began to chant dark lyrics: a man in trench-coat, sunglasses on, and with the strangest scar Sieben had ever seen.

_Uncertain when the idea ca-a-a-ame._

_Was maybe...in a fit of anger, _

_Or maybe in a dre-e-am._

_But promises of miracles of old forgotten plans!_

_They wallow, _

_...rotten in filth._

_No hopes, no goals..._

_No-o-o redemption! _

_A song bereft of passion!_

_A fetus in the sink!_

_The stink of days'-old whiskey on his breath..._

_Death breath._

_Death breath..._

_Waiting for catharsis, _

_...Or waiting for a bla-a-ade! _

_A sa-a-vior to call the close and pull the final curtain down! _

_Wait in silence..._

_And peacefully she tiptoed across the room_

_And took his ha-a-and._

_White-haired lady in the moonlight!_

_Supple skin, lightly tanned..._

_Lowering the bottle!_

_With an ounce of courage gently voicing, _

_Encouraging_

_Take them now-w-w-w_

_Finish it..._

Sieben looked left, slightly tilting her head. She saw that Jack Bent was nodding his head in rhythm to the music. He seemed to be especially into the rhythm, enjoying it—mouth moving along with the lyrics. Was he feeling something in it, too?

Then she began to feel something else in the music herself, beginning to feel..._strange. _Up on stage, the singing man in the trenchcoat was wearing sunglasses in this bar. Yet she had the idea that he could see _everything. _The lyrics he was singing also seemed to connect exactly with her. The strangeness began to feel a little _good, _as if the music was resonating with something inside of her.

"_Hey... It's a good time to go,_" said Jack Bent, speaking slightly louder than the music. Sieben didn't want to go. Yet the replicate-girl _had _to go. She stood and followed. There was a doorway. "_We're going next door,_" he explained to her. "_It's just over there..._"

2.

Sieben felt a strange and slightly disturbing shudder pass through her body when she passed through the door. It was enough to make her blink and stagger, feeling lost and confused for the space of a second. Something else was also different.

Looking down, the replicate-girl now saw that she was suddenly dressed in a different outfit. Now she was dressed in ankle-boots with dark stockings that clinging to the lengths of her legs, a leather skirt clinging over her hips, worn with a close-fitting blue blouse. For some modesty, a loose gold-colored jacket was on her and worn open. Her hair also had a slightly fuller feeling to it, the sort of feeling it had when styled. Metal fingers gently to her own long silky dark hair, she wondered, _How could something like this happen...? _

What was it that he said…? Oh yes, he had said that they were going "next door." In fact, this place actually was another night-club. This was a large room with dim colored lights along the periphery and low blue lighting for illumination in the middle, a dance floor. A few couples were slow-dancing on that dance-floor while more people sat at tables at the far opposite end. And here she was, standing by the wall.

Jack Bent seemed not to be anywhere around. Damn... She wanted to ask him something like, _How the Hell did you do that? _But there was no asking of Hell-oriented questions because the curly haired man just wasn't here. Maybe he tripped on the way through the door? So she looked back... There was no door there now. So how did she get here? _How _did she get here? Somehow, Sieben had the idea that it had been more than just an ordinary doorway.

Other things didn't make too much sense, either. First, her clothes and hair change on her—into clothes more fitting a young lady out for night-club socializing...or the clothing of a young prostitute. That was, except for the gold-colored leather jacket. Sieben never saw any prostitutes wear gold-colored leather jackets. Now the doorway that she _just stepped through _was not there any more. There was just a beige-painted concrete wall of this club. Jack Bent was nowhere in sight.

But someone else familiar wasin sight. Looking beyond the few tall dancing couples, looking at the tables across the way, Sieben saw herself. Yes, the replicate-girl was seeing herself sitting at one of the night-club tables. Sitting with her—herself—was none other than petite and beautiful Kyrie. Both Kyrie and her-self were looking at the stage—where the musicians were playing and singing the music. Kyrie, petite and delicately beautiful Kyrie...

Even from across the room, Sieben could see Kyrie's delicate beauty with the big pretty gold-colored eyes, her face framed with moonsilk-pale hair—hair that was brushed to cascade behind her slender jacket-covered back. Her legs were left bare by the shorts she wore. Kyrie... Sieben was sitting with Kyrie.

No, that would be _another_ Sieben sitting with Kyrie. This Sieben saw that she had on a very similar outfit to her own self, excepting the jacket and the purse. Sieben here did not have her little purse. _That _Sieben over there had the purse. And the other Sieben had on a dark leather jacket. Otherwise, the outfits were identical: the same mini-boots and stockings, same skirt with dark blue blouse, same hair-style. The replicate-girl could not believe this, let on believe what was happening.

Maybe this wasn't happening. Maybe a closer look would help her figure this out. She took a few steps onto the night-club dance-floor in trying to get over to where she was sitting with Kyrie. Then came..._horizontal static lines crossing her vision. Mixed with it was some kind of reddish glow. More static filled her hearing. Warning signals were going off in her computer-mind._

_Thinking better of it, Sieben did her best to go back and away—staggering backwards…she _immediately felt better. So approaching her own self was not a good idea? All that the replicate girl could do was look across this dimly lit night-club and look at beautiful Kyrie sitting with another Sieben. It made her just so upset. That, and there was a lingering feeling of uneasiness from that interference with her own mind.

_Like, somebody is fooling around with my head! _As more gentle music began playing out from the stage and the couples kept dancing on the dance-floor, that was the only explanation that Sieben could think up. _Somebody figured out how to hack into the circuitry of my mind and is screwing around inside me. After all, my brain's just a computer anyway, replicated bio-chip. Somebody figured it out and is screwing me over. So who's screwing with my brain? _Who could it be, indeed…? Then Sieben saw the midgets.

There were those strange short muscular men, crouching by the raised stage. Her electronic eyes allowed her to seem them even as they blended in with the dim shadows by the stage. No one else here seemed to see them—or mind them. Except Sieben _could _see them. Maybe nobody else in this night club noticed them, but she could see them. One of them gave a slow wave of an arm. Meaning, they knew that she could see them. A slight..._burst of static acknowledged this. _

_"Ow-w-w-w...!" she exclaimed. Yet her voiced complaint lost in the music. The interference was making her stagger sideways, away from the direction of the stage . One of those muscular mutant-midgets in coveralls broke away from the rest to begin walking along the wall in coming over here. The creature also had a strange device in his left hand, something made of rusted metal and with dull red lights glowing on the underside. _

_Sieben had the idea that the creature's intents were dark and cruel—that he wanted to hurt her. As he came closer with the rusty metal device, Sieben could feel the interference intensifying. The replicate-girl turned and did her best to move quickly towards the exit, stumbling once but getting up to get on out of here..._

_Whamp!_ The double-doors slapped open as Sieben stumbled out of the club with all the gangliness of someone intoxicated, stepping out onto the city sidewalk next to the street. Those..._mutants _had been the cause of the interference in her mind, whoever or _what-ever _those mutants were. This replicate-girl never remembered hearing anything about those guys. And since her mind was partially programmed in Zalem, she would have likely "remembered" there being such things. Zalem knew almost everything about what went on here at the ground level, partially because of those flying eyeball-creatures and partially because of there being robotic overseer around every other corner.

Speaking of Net-men, she _really _ought to let them know that those short guys in coveralls were walking around the city, using some kind of illegal ability to interfere with replicates' computer-brains! Sieben looked left and right in the hope of spotting one of those Net-men or something. She would tell them all about how if the Factory was ever going to make replicate-people like her, they ought to be on the lookout for short guys in gold coveralls. She looked past the people walking along this city sidewalk. Now where could they be...? Something was not right about this.

Then she knew. It was the sun. Though everything else seemed to be in place, there was something wrong with how the sun was shining. Or it was how the sun was _not _shining, at least not as brightly as it should. She looked up at the sky and expected a view of things going into sunset. If daylight was getting to be this color, it should be… Right?

It was not. The sun's position was just barely past afternoon. And since this city was in the desert, it ought to be full daylight right now. It wasn't. Yet the day was already beginning to take on those deep glowing orange tones. It was as if the sun itself was fading off or something. But that couldn't be right... The sun just does not begin to fade out. It's supposed to last another two billion years or something.

It could also be because of some kind of new air pollution that made the sun look as if it was getting dimmer and more golden in color. Air pollution could do that, make for early and more beautiful sunsets.

Sieben remembered seeing sunsets on days after a nuclear fusion-plant malfunctioned and exploded deeper within Scrap Iron City: The skies over the area were contaminated with radioactive and toxic dust that cause a lot of fleshies to sicken and die, more of them developing skin tumors and dying later. The replicate-girl also remembered that the sunsets of those days were some of the most beautiful sunsets she had ever seen. Right now, sunlight was taking on early sunset colors—which could likely mean that something was going wrong. "_Hey Sieben!_"

"_Eek!_" shrieked this replicate-girl in leather skirt and gold-colored jacket, hopping to the right. It took a full few seconds for her to realize that it was just Jack Bent now standing here. "Don't_ do that!_" she screamed. "For real! Where the _Hell _did you jump out from, anyway?"

He shrugged. "Well, you're not too far off from the truth. Anyway, I was just waiting around for you..." The curly haired man in tee shirt and slacks jerked a thumb towards the night-club. "Did you see something..._wrong _in there? Namely, did you see yourself—dressed in a very similar way?" Then he looked Sieben once over, from her mini-boots and stockings-clad legs to leather skirt and tight-fitting top, a gold-colored jacket worn with everything. Her hair had also changed. Sieben was very nice to look at—especially to male eyes. But that wasn't the point. "Nice outfit! Did you notice that you've changed?"

"Like, _of course!_" exclaimed Sieben, her eyes wide. She had that tone of voice used in expressing the most obvious of facts. Then the replicate-girl looked around as if there could be something listening she would prefer not to be listening. "Listen... What's going on here? How could that be _me _in there? I was standing in one place, and then I saw _myself_ sitting with Kyrie..." She saw Jack Bent clutch his head and wince. "Hey, what's wrong?"

The curly haired man put up his left hand in a _stop _gesture. "Remember...what I told you about asking me questions like that?" His eyes stopped squinching. "I could try and give you a simple explanation, but then I'd start to lose myself—like in the room. All I can say is, those short guys in gold-colored coveralls...and this weather, it has something to do with karma. Someone screwed up, fooling around with karma, now things are a little out of whack." He looked up at the sky, then looked around. "Nah... I'm looking around and I just changed my mind. Make that, _a lot _out of whack. None of this is supposed to have happened. Did you know that?"

"I don't understand..." said Sieben. She looked around some more at the local cityscape, was again reminded of how the sunlight was the wrong kind of color for this time of day—things being a little out of whack. There was _no way _that the sunlight was supposed to be like this at this time of day. Okay... So things were _a lot _out of whack, what could that mean? And this strange man just said something about it having to do with karma. Karma was supposed to be one of the basic forces in the universe. "What does karma have to do with those weird guys in gold coveralls?"

"Well, I don't understand everything myself," said Jack Bent. "I'm just saying... We've got somebody humping around with some of the most basic forces of the universe itself. Here's how I'd try and explain it." He put up both hands and began gesturing as if he was holding an imaginary net. "Think of the universe as just some kind of net, holding all the groovy laws of physics in place: light, gravity, the existence of atoms and subatomic particles... All that stuff.

"How does it exist? Better yet, _why _does it exist? Scientists _know _reality exists. But do they ever explain _why _reality exists. There's some kind of mystical force that holds atoms together—electrons whirling like crazy around nuclei. Then the atoms sort of _stick _together. Atoms jive together to make up _stuff_. I mean _planets _and stuff. Planets, they get exposed to light and have heat inside and go around stars—most of the time.

"But all of this makes sense... Too much sense. How the _heck _does everything keep making sense? I'll tell you what I think.

"Does anyone ever stop to wonder _how _or _why _the universe makes _too _much sense? It's like there's something behind it is keeping everything from leaking and breaking down. Reality is solid and reliable stuff. Well, it's solid so long as crazy headed, flan-eating scientists don't figure out how to rip reality's fabric.

"And guess what? That jokester finally _did _figure out to rip open the fabric of reality. That's right. He took some fancy machines, started eating some flan, then he pressed some big red button. The machines also ended up doing another thing. And we're living with the results."

Sieben spoke up. "Like... What kind of machines can _do_ that? I thought that sort of technology stuff could only exist in the days before the Interplanetary Wars. Like, how can it be true? And those little guys in the gold-colored coveralls... They don't make any sense."

"Things don't _have _to make sense to us any more," explained Jack Bent. "That's the point! When you rip the fabric of reality, things are bound to change. Those little bastards _don't _make any sense. Walking through doorways and finding yourself in an alternate reality, _that _doesn't have to make sense. And I'll tell you what...! As things just keep going on, things are just keep going to make less and less sense if this keeps up. Remember when I said the universe is some kind of invisible net? You tear a little hole in the fabric, and we all know what happens to things when they tear a little at first. Yup... You rip one hole. Then that rip just keeps getting wider and wider...until the whole darned thing ends up with every person being torn apart with nightmares and dreams."

Sieben suddenly felt a little sick with fear and dread. Something very, very wrong was going on now. Here was this curly haired man telling her the truth—which was terrible. Forget Zalem and all its rich citizens above the suffering of the world. Forget about the Geo-Catastrophe... Forget about all that because this was the end of the world.

It wasn't bad enough that humanity spent centuries trying to wreck the planet to the point where most animals were made extinct, centuries of warfare and toxic pollution. Now someone was fooling around with karma itself somehow. _Clack! _She stomped one of her mini-booted feet. The gesture also caused her jacket and hair to jiggle a little. "So what can we do about it? All I know is that there's another _me _walking around with _my _Kyrie. And that other _me _isn't just another replicate. It's like..." The replicate-girl crossed her sleeves-covered lithe arms as if to hug herself. "Like...I can _feel _it's me. But _I'm_ supposed to be me, right? And when I tried to get close, bad things started to happen to me."

Jack Bent nodded—then winced. "_Ach_... I just had a hit of pain in my head." He still squinted an eye and said, "It would be best if we got out and away from here before you run into yourself. By the way, your own self would _not _want to see you. Your other self would see you as probably being a monster or something."

"_Huh!_" exclaimed Sieben. She put her hands to her face: robotic hands with metal fingers touching the synthetic flesh of her face. "A _monster? _How? My face doesn't feel changed. I know my clothes and hair changed. Kyrie didn't think I was a monster… Lots of people once told me that I'm very pretty in a cute sort of way…"

"No... Hey! It's not like that. _You_ still look like _you_—still cute and beautiful. It's just that your _other _you will just see something that threatens its life," explained Jack Bent. "I've heard that something like this was supposed to happen. We've got to go—for _real._"

"Yeah, you're right and stuff," agreed Sieben. She looked around once, returned her gaze to Jack Bent. "Okay... Like, where can we go? Are those _weird guys _anywhere...?" The replicate-girl asked these questions aloud. She also asked herself how and why Jack Bent knew so much about why things like this were happening.

Jack Bent gently took hold of Sieben's left elbow with a hand and began leading her away. The two were now going along the sidewalk with Jack Bent doing his best not to let the sunset-colored sunlight directly glowing into his eyes. "Listen to this. I ought to be asking _you _that question, about where we can go. So think about it. If that other you is going to do exactly what you remember doing before, then you know what _you _are going to do in this universe." By now, their walking brought them to the intersection. This was where they could more safely cross the street.


	14. Chapter 14

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 14—Him Again…and Again

1.

Walking along this sunset-illuminated sidewalk, Sieben and Jack Bent were looking for someplace safe to go and plan their next course of action. They couldn't go back to that night-club—especially since _those _strange short men had taken it over. Also true was how there was another Sieben in there. So... Where could they go? Exactly where, Jack Bent could not exactly be sure. And exactly _how _they were going to deal with this problem of things going wrong, he did not know. So he asked the replicate-girl.

"Like... Hey! _Don't ask me!_" exclaimed Sieben. "All of this weirdness is really getting to me! I'm still trying to get over how there's another _me _out on a date with Kyrie. Jeez, is this really happening?"

Now there's a 10,000-chip question! Jack Bent barely understood himself what was going on at all. All he had in mind were distant and haphazard memories of something about someone screwing up karma and machinery that ought not exist: strips and swaths of thought about a whacked-out scientist whose favorite past-time was somewhere between cosmic science and flan consumption. Then something very terrible happened, and it happened again, happened again... It would likely happen yet again—an event to obliterate this part of the universe to make it go around again.

"Why in _tarnation _did that freak-ball scientist have to muddle and fuddle with karma?" asked Jack Bent aloud. Sieben tilted her head to the right, giving Jack Bent a sideward and vaguely curious look. "What I mean is, why in Hell's Bells would a scientist fiddle and muddle around with karma? It's not like nuclear power. You can't use it to easily make electricity or power one of those space-ships from the War. You can do that with _fusion _power—easily enough. Or if you like it dirty and dangerous, you can for fission. Fooling around with karma... It's a great big _Why?_"

Sieben looked ahead again, looking in the direction they were walking. She gave a quick shrug, gold-colored open jacket flapping. "Like... Maybe the scientist was bored and stuff. There was this old saying about bored hands being the workshop of evil. You're talking about somebody from Zalem, right? So the bored scientist probably found something to do, you know?"

To this, Jack Bent shook his head. "Well, golly! He must have been thinking, 'I'm bored! I think the thing to do now is to analyze and draw out one of the critical forces of the fabric of reality. Then I'll fool around with it until something especially freaky happens!' Yeah, and he must have had at least six bowls of flan to go with the thought, too."

"Maybe he didn't know any better, like a curious kid," countered Sieben. "Like, what I'm saying is, where would the world be if everybody just stopped doing new stuff and just kept going on the same-old, lame-old way? Maybe he thought he was doing something good for the world...for once."

Jack Bent refused this, too. Saying, "Nope, that wily haired scientist must have known at least a little what kind of freak-boy danger levels he was running. There had to be some way he'd know what he was doing." He and Sieben went on a few more steps without talking. Then he added, "Look, scientists have _always _had some kind of signs that what they were doing was crazy dangerous. In the past, scientists doing dangerous experiments have always had warnings. _Warnings, _like people-getting-hurt sort of warnings. The first experiments with _radiation _killed some of the original scientists involved. And when nuclear bombs exploded, people were made blind, sick, full of cancers, and dead. All of that was just the universe's way of letting humanity know that certain forces needed some extra care. Little signs... I'm thinking of little signs. So _why _did he have to go ahead and slam the big red button labeled _ON, _eh? Or maybe..." A thought came to mind about that. It made Jack Bent stop walking and smile like a goofball.

"Like, why are you stopping?" asked Sieben pointedly, stopping herself. "And why are you smiling like a goofball?" She put her hands on skirt-covered hips. "You could _tell _me, you know! It's not like I can open up your head and find out what you're thinking. Or those jerks in the gold-colored coveralls could maybe do something like that... Those little freaks, by the way, could be watching us right now!"

"I've got to figure out how we can get back to the bar," mumbled Jack Bent. "That's probably the only other way I can see it. Hmm yeah… And another one of her drinks could really help me out. Okay! Let's go!"

"What the Hell!" exclaimed Sieben. Then she clenched her fists and impatiently _stomped_ her left foot. "_How_ can you think of drinking beer at a time like _this!_" The replicate-girl began to impatiently tap that left foot—the sound of her right mini-boot audible because there was no traffic on the city road. _Tap-tap-tap-tap… _"Look... If you get _plastered _now, you'll be slobbering and staggering all over the place. Then what are you gonna do if those little guys in gold coveralls come for you?"

"No, no, no...! Don't be silly. I'm not talking about getting _drunk!_" countered Jack Bent. "The kind of bar I'm thinking about isn't just that kind of bar. Something..._else _always goes on there. It's..." Sieben kept giving _that_ look "If you're not going to give me any trust, Sieben, at least give it to me on loan. This place isn't the sort of place a person would _want _to get drunk in, even if a person could figure out how to get to this place at all. This kind of bar... You don't find it. _It _finds _you._"

"Okay, Mister _I-Don't-Like-Making-Sense_ Man," commented Sieben, hands on leather-covered hips and big shiny dark eyes wide in annoyance, her voice higher pitched than usual. "So, like. Where is this mystery place, huh? Wait... Is it just in your imagination? Really! Well, _gosh! _Let's just climb into your head and get lost! Just hold still while I bash open your head... Or you should take some drugs and imagine you were there. Now where's a junkie-dealer when you need one?"

The curly haired man in tee shirt and slacks looked past Sieben. "Well, I'll be snookered! I'll tell you what. The bar's not far from here. You could even say that it's pretty darned close." Jack Bent smiled. He looked past the pretty replicate girl. "Could say that—because it is."

"Like, what are you talking about!" impatiently exclaimed Sieben. Then she whirled around—her long dark hair fluttering and gold-colored jacket flapping. Having turned around, she could not immediately believe her own eyes. "Where'd _this _come from!"

Indeed, there so happened to be a certain place-in-question that she didn't notice before. Nobody could have missed this place—because there were letters written in three-foot high neon letters. _The Crimson Circle. _Drinking places hereabouts in Scrap Iron City had odd names at times, some in different languages. Except this one had a name that even _felt _weird.

It wasn't just the name. No... There was something _else _about this place. It just wasn't here a second ago. In fact, this was just a food shop or something: windows, signs and all. Now it was the two-way entrance to what was most certainly a drinking establishment. Only bars had _this_ kind of door. Even if a person didn't know how to read--as many in Scrap Iron City didn't--a person could look for a picture-sign of a beer mug or look for _this _kind of door. Drinking bars most often had the same kinds of doors. There was no way that this doorway could have just appeared

_Wasn't here a second ago, _thought the replicate-girl... A careful step brought her towards this door, a sort of _something-isn't-right _sort of feeling inside her. She leaned forward and reached out with her left arm—metal fingers reaching. Then a haze of static..._fazed over her vision. "Oo-h-h-h..." complained the replicate-girl. She began to feel a little woozy. Something..._was _interfering with her bio-chip mind_. Both her hands went to the synthetic skin of her forehead, and she staggered back. "Hey...! Like, what's going on? _My brain is malfunctioning. I... I can't think straight. Really dizzy…_" She staggered backwards.

"Your brain's not working right? Heh, since when is that news?" asked Jack Bent. "Only fooling you, cutie! Alright, I don't know how long the door's going to stay open. We have to get in there. Heck, we're lucky it appeared so conveniently at all. Let's boogie!"

A hand grabbed Sieben's right wrist—where the metal emerged from the right sleeve of her leather jacket. "_What...? Wait a sec!_" complained a woozy and confused Sieben. "_I'm not sure I can go through there... Hey!_"

It was too late to stop now! Her words were swallowed up the second she was taken beyond the open doorway. Opened, the doorway itself was a tall rectangle of darkness that seemed to also swallow any and all sort of light that shone in. There was no seeing beyond the doorway from this side. And since both people went in, the door shut.

Then it was just an ordinary front entrance to your typical store-front market for food—nothing odd about it. There were lots of store-front businesses like this throughout Scrap Iron City. Also true was how most of them were a little more broken down-looking. There were no foodstuffs in the carts set to the left and right of the door, but there were little bits of leaves and grain-bits from when there was food being sold. A great big window to the right of the door showed a view inside of crates where there actually were stocks of food set up for customers: sacks of corn, boxes of crunchy dried beans and the sort of fruit that could go a while without refrigeration... Nope, there hadn't been a bar here at all. One certainly didn't appear for ninety seconds. And no one _certainly _disappeared beyond the darkened doorway to go into here.

They were now standing near the entrance to this bar. Reddish-colored sunset light slanted in from the windows to illuminate tables. "You big _jerk!_" exclaimed Sieben. She _shoved _Jack Bent, making him go _Whoa _and fall down. "Like, what'd you have to do _that _for? I wasn't _ready _to go yet. What if the radiation would've messed up my brain? My brain case is tough against most things, but I'm still more sensitive than fleshies to electromagnetic interference and stuff."

"Well, golly... Sorry 'bout that. But we _had _to go," explained Jack Bent as he stared across the main room. There was the red-haired female bartender again—slender and pretty in tight-fitting black pants and white blouse worn with black vest. "Hey! Thanks for inviting us!" He then began to stride over towards where the female bartender was standing and waiting. Sieben followed.

"'Tis thee yet again," commented the female bartender. She glanced at Sieben walking over here. "Did ye involve yet another to thy cycles 'round thy circuit o' existence? Or do ye seek to _drop _the ball?"

Now both Sieben and Jack Bent "I'd drop it most definitely," said Jack Bent. "This game's getting too red for me to play anymore. Now I want _out. _We both want out. Right Sieben?"

Sieben began saying, "Like... I don't know about this _game _you're talking about! I just want everything to get back to normal." She put her right hand to her neck—lengths of delicate machinery there that resembled human neck muscles. "I remember feeling my head being yanked off of my body. Next thing I know, somebody in some weird dark place fixed me back up. It was some place somewhere else or something... I come back, and things start getting weird."

Suddenly, the female bartender's hands were on Jack Bent's shoulders—close to closing around his neck. "Ye did verily take thy mechanical wench to the Other place?_ Ye did such as that!_" shrieked the female bartender. "_'Tis not in the plans! _Ye did verily trifle with th' dark machines! Verily, thou hast undone us all!"

A confused look to her face, Sieben looked to the female bartender, then looked at Jack Bent. The female bartender still had a grip on Jack Bent... "What! What's going on? Hey lady! Like, let him go! He saved me! He..." _Thwack-k-k! _

When the static and damage lines cleared from her vision, when her systems recovered, Sieben realized that she was now all the way across the room. Something must have hit her—something _hard. _She was nearly to the windows that let in the sunset-colored light. Somehow, this happened without her crashing into any of the tables. The replicate-girl made a quick flexing maneuver to snap to her feet. Then she ran towards the bar. _Thwack! _

"_Ee-eigh!_" shrieked the replicate girl when she was _stuck _again—flying to go _smack _against the wall, bouncing off it and landing on the floor. This left her lying on her side with her left leg drawn inward and both arms splayed, a side of her long dark hair obscuring her face, her jacket askew. Something very fast and very powerful must have hit her to make her go _flying. _

Troubling as that impact was, there was no real damage—other than her pride. Sieben's feminine electromechanical body was designed for agility and endurance—able to take hits. And since she had a bio-chip for a brain, there was no concussion. Still, there was a slight haze of static to her vision now. She was actually more confused than hurt. And she was a little frightened, too. Still, the replicate-girl stood shakily up. "What'd I ever do to you, huh? You didn't have to _hit _me and stuff! And let him go before I kick your ass, invisible attacks or not!"

"_Wa-hey-y-y!_ Everything's cool, Sieben," said Jack Bent, staring into the eyes of the beautiful female bartender. Though seething with anger, the female bartender still retained a look of beauty—even as her fingers began to sink painfully into his shoulder-muscles. "You can't do anything against her in this place, anyway. This is her reality." Speaking to the female bartender, he said, "Look, I couldn't do it alone. Somebody had to help me. Besides, things can't get worst any faster than they are."

"Nevertheless, 'tis not the place o' the likes o' thee to trifle with th' dark machines o' _th' Others_," insisted the female bartender. "Ye couldst' obliterated what little consistency remained o' the universe. 'Tis contribution to _their _plan. Besides, ye've interfered with th' destiny o' the lass."

"Now wait a second," insisted Jack Bent. "It wouldn't matter what happened to Sieben anyway. The replicate-girl was going to end up being taken to the _Other _place, anyway. You know what happens there. And what about Sechs, huh? Sechs isn't supposed to be here according to what's 'supposed to happen.' The Sechs replicate is working for _them _now. If they could use a replicate, then why can't I use a replicate to stop them?"

For a moment, the female bartender still kept gripping Jack Bent. Her seemingly delicate fingers actually were supernaturally strong—still gripping deeply into Jack Bent's shoulders. This made the man grimace a little. Red wetness began to soak around the areas where the fingers dug into tee-shirt cloth and shoulders... Then she let him go.

"Aye... I'll grant ye that," said the female bartender. She suddenly looked sadly to the left—looking out the sunset-colored windows. Other than the sunlight, the city-scape out there looked..._darkened. _It was as if the world beyond this bar was somehow..._changed. _Or it was about to be obliterated, as if what little sunset there was out there kept everything from being overtaken by the forces of darkness and night. "'Tis little in the vast sway o' this universe. Ye didst verily partake o' _their _ dark stylings."

"Well, _you _can afford to be all high and mighty in attitude because _you _don't have to go out there and face _them_," said Jack Bent. He sat down atop one of the bar-stools. "The little bastards seem to be popping up everywhere. It's bad enough that they _got _me already. I don't even know what they did to me when they did—though my stomach hurts like Hell sometimes... Maybe I'm dying right now because of them. All I knew is that I needed some help to do what I can to keep _them _from fulfilling their master plan."

"Wait a sec..." said Sieben aloud. "I wanna get back at Sechs. Sechs, that _freak!_ That thingought not even be allowed to _exist!_ Whose idea was it to make that monster, anyway?"

A person would believe that a replicate is merely a bio-chipped being with a with a slightly altered bio-chip body. Except Sieben was still a person—her mind programmed to emulate humanity, emotions and all. And right now, some kind of emotion was telling her _not _to face Sechs again or anything associated with that nightmarish replicate. Then there was how Sechs was partnered with _all _of those short freaks!

Something began to happen outside. Something was beginning to cloud up the sunset-toned light shining through the large picture-window of this place. "What's happening? What's that mean?"

Even as Sieben watched, more things were happening beyond the barrier of glass that separated this bar from that other world outside. The sunset-colored light darkened and weakened. Outside, the buildings began to darken, crumble in places—as if rotting somewhat. Concrete debris was strewn in the street. Some of the buildings even had their tops crumble out of existence, as if they were being eaten by time. Across the street and looking into that sunset-colored place, slight views of dark shadowy shapes were moving along... The sights of those dark shapes made Sieben feel sick with dread.

"Do ye see?" asked the female bartender. "Now, ye shall verily see the culmination o' their plan. 'Tis the darkness o' th' final oblivion. 'Tis the end o' the universe, 'tis their dark plan." She nodded. "Aye... The life o' humanity has been but a dream. Now comes th' nightmare. Watch more closely, lass and lad alike..."

_Watch what? _Sieben kept looking out the picture window. Soon, she noticed something else. There were faint streaks of a glowing crimson—faint and barely noticeable. If the female bartender hadn't told her to look more carefully, Sieben would not have noticed them. Now she did. Then there was how those shadowy things became a little bit more clear to see: dark shadowy forms that barely hid the bodies of distorted creatures that could have once been human a long, long time ago. The things were walking around as if they owned the city now..."

"_No!_" screamed Sieben, hands pressed to the glass. "I don't want the world ending up that way and… Oh my gosh! _Kyrie's out there!_" Sieben began to pound the glass of the window—though somehow unable to break it. It was as if this glass was stuck in another universe.

The female bartender gave a slow and wise nod. "'Tis naught to do but resist. Go forth, assist Jack Bent. Thy comrade requires assistance in saving thy world. If not..." She looked beyond Sieben and out at the view outside: a land of darkness. "Th' darkness has not won out yet. There is yet the golden light o' hope still"

2.

They stepped outside of the one-story city building—Sieben and Jack Bent. It was still somehow the same time of day out here when they left, oddly enough. Slanting sunlight from the sky made for sunset-colored illumination. To the left and right sides of this street, the tops of buildings set in the low gold color of the dying day. It was all illumination of the dying daylight as night was coming darkly on. And given the angle of the sunlight, not only did it make for most things being cast in softer tones, it also made the shadows much longer. The darkness was on its way.

Darkness, shadows... There was also a sense of abandonment and evacuation to everything. Other than Sieben herself and Jack Bent, there seems to have been just empty streets. Wind howled along the emptied city streets, howling between buildings. It seemed especially lonely to Sieben and made her feel a little scared. This replicate-girl turned around to look back at the door they stepped through, wishing for a way back.

Except the door wasn't there. _It figures, _she thought. _Maybe the thing wasn't really there in the first place. _That sort of thing would have bothered her before. She was just getting used to little things of that sort. It all seemed to make its own kind of sense. _Fwap-p-p! _

A section of sidewalk just flipped open. There was just enough time for Sieben to think, _What...? _And in that sliver of time, she just so happen to see at least a dozen of those short muscular mutants in gold-colored coveralls suddenly start scrambling up out of the sidewalk-hole. It was a section of sidewalk that was just two meters from where Jack Bent was standing.

"_Elkric!_" came a voice from behind. Sieben turned around. Even more of those short muscular midgets in gold-colored coveralls were coming out of a darkened alley. Combined with the ones climbing up out of the sidewalk, they were very soon surrounded. "_Satya-a-agraha! Oblama—larb-lotom! Larb-lotom, elkric!_" they chanted—among other things Sieben could not understand. And that was when they got Jack Bent.

_Swish-thunch! _One of the little freaks swung a very big hammer—the head of the hammer actually the size of a human head. It struckJack Bent in the chest and made for some kind of awful wet _crunch _sound. The curly haired man took an unsteady step backwards as the hammer dropped away from his crushed chest.

There he stood, a surprised look on his face. His mouth moved... The curly haired man in tee shirt and jeans was trying to say something. Or he was trying to breathe. He could do neither. Instead, he coughed once and collapsed to lie down on the sidewalk.

There, the man clutched his broken chest while writhing on the sidewalk. _This can't be happening. _He wasn't looking up at Sieben. Nor was he at all looking at the short muscular being in gold-colored coveralls that did the deed with the hammer. His surprised, wide-open eyes were looking up at the gold-colored low glow of the sunset-colored sky above. Then he began to shake his head, his mouth still open with no words or breath moving through. _This can't be happening, _he seemed to be thinking, slowly shaking his head in denial. _No... No... This isn't happening at all._

"_Jack...?_" exclaimed the replicate-girl, sinking to her knees beside the fallen curly haired man. She found her focus narrowing to just Jack Bent lying here on the sidewalk, ignoring the surrounding buildings, ignoring the muscular mutants in gold-colored coveralls that were even closer. "Jack! Please get up!" Her caring hands—hands of metal—sought his gnarled flesh hands."_Like, come on, dude!_"

He could not get up. Instead, the man clutched Sieben's hands while squirming on the sidewalk. The twisted pain and misery on his face showed the misery within as dark fluid colored his shirt. Briefly, he looked at Sieben—before he looked away and stopped moving.

This was his death. There was no graceful, choreographed collapse to the ground. It was not a clean and beautiful event for the man. Instead, there was just misery and pain. It was his own inner Hell until surrendering to the final darkness and madness.

"_Arm-m'raka, elkric!_" declared one of those midgets in gold-colored coveralls. "_Oblamah!_" At least six of them all bent over to take hold of Jack Bent. All sorts of big strong calloused hands grabbed his wrists and arms, more grabbing ankles. Oh yes, they most certainly _got _him. They got him _good. _Now they were starting to take him away.

Sieben snapped to her feet and began fighting. "Let...him..._go_, you creepy little freaks!" She began to swiftly _kick _and _punch _at the muscular short men, her legs and arms beginning to _strike _and _kick_—her long dark hair following her like a banner. Her leather skirt ripped up a side in the process, and her leather jacket flapped about as she struck and moved about, kicking and _hitting_.

Every one of her blows broke flesh and smashed the bones beneath muscle. She must have landed over two-dozen hits on the mutants. Tearing her leather skirt only made it easier for her to move around, even if her leather jacket hampered her a bit.

And the replicate-girl kept fighting, kept _kicking_ and _hitting_. Every one of her strikes impacted the flesh of an enemy, hitting with machine-speed. The replicate-girl was _sure _that her attacks were doing serious bodily harm to these short men in gold-colored coveralls. But for every one of them she must have knocked out or killed, there were at least three more to take each fallen one's place.

They were _everywhere. _She could feel them bumping into her, rubbing against her legs and hips, more of them touching the back of her leather jacket, a _crowd of the freaks all jostling and such_. Even if they did not hit back, just the sheer press of their numbers insured that she could not beat them all. "_Elkric...! Satyagraha, lottor-lob-mo!_" they said some more. "_Arm-m'raka!_"

Then they suddenly began going away again. Droves of them began to hobble over to the darkened alleyway. More of them began going down into that flipped-open section of sidewalk. Overall, they were getting away from here after doing what they came to get done. Some of them stayed behind long enough to grab their dead and fallen comrades by the ankles before running away.

The last of them disappeared into an alley. And that was it. There were no more of those short muscular guys in gold coveralls. No more of them swarmed all over the sidewalk. All of this sidewalk and the street suddenly became especially abandoned—except for the breeze. The wind howled once before quieting.

Where were they taking him? "_Jack..!_" exclaimed Sieben. She looked anxiously around. Again going to her knees, easier to do since her skirt was ripped, the replicate-girl crawled along the sidewalk as her metal fingers touched and scraped for the opening. When there was no way she could find _which _section of sidewalk flipped open, the sudden will-stealing streak of fear and worry seemed to rob her of her strength, making her sit down she sat down hard on her butt. She tilted back her head to scream. "_Answer me-e-e-e-e!_"

The only thing that answered her was a slight and distant echo of her own voice. It did sound pathetic and distant. Even that was snatched away by the _how-w-wling _of the city breeze. The breeze now seemed to be the only other thing here—a solitary replicate-girl among the buildings.

So of course there was no answer from him. There was no sight of the curly haired man in tee shirt and shorts. In fact, there seemed to be no one on this city sidewalk but herself. _He's_ _gone, _came the dark thought to her mind. Except by _gone, _the replicate-girl had the idea that—where Jack Bent was taken—he would likely not come back. They killed him. Then they took away his dead body.

Sieben began to feel her willpower breaking down. As a fully synthetic replicate person, both her body and mind were robotic: an electromechanical body shaped like that of a cyborg female, her brain a bio-chip designed to make her seem as if her mind was human. Synthetic skin made for a realistic face, with polymer strands for her long dark silky hair cascading from her scalp, ocular-shaped cameras for eyes. As a replicate, she ought _not _be really afraid of anything. So _why _did she feel a little bit shaky? Something else was making her feel this way.

Then the replicate-girl began to feel something else... The static lines began to..._blur over her vision a little. _It made for her feeling even more odd, a little bit numb all over. Something else was wrong here. She only knew what was wrong when a certain symbol appeared within a corner of her mind. It was an Ancient symbol made with a circle, with three triangles inside—the triangles in a tri-formation, their apexes touching in the middle. That symbol represented dangerous levels of _radiation. _

The place where Jack Bent was taken away, into the sidewalk... This place was heating up with dangerous levels of nuclear _radiation_. The _radiation _was damaging Sieben's insides right now—the _radiation _interfering with her bio-chip mind and maybe damaging it. It was hurting her. _It's hurting my brain. _

The thought was enough to spur Sieben into standing on shaky legs... For once, she regretted having long legs: nice stylish legs to look at, but just a little ungainly when things were troublesome. At least the thigh-length tear in her leather skirt made it easier for her to get up and go away. That _radiation _symbol flickered lower in her troubled mind as she stagger-walked away. The feeling was still all over.

And Sieben kept going that way—the sunset-golden light shining on her face and coloring everything. There was dizziness and numbness all over her from the radiation. Only when the replicate-girl made it about forty meters away did she begin to feel a little better. A look back at where she was on the sidewalk... That made for a deep red glare to her vision, so she looked away again. It was the sort of radiation from inside nuclear fusion generators or from outer space: gamma ray radiation, beta rays, out-of-control X-rays...those kinds. The sun gave off multiple kinds of radiation, sure. Yet the atmosphere around the planet had a layer that blocked out most of the worst kinds.

It was the sort of energy that made terrible things happen: invisible, silent and harmful. Those forms of radiation gave humans all kinds of cancers, made them sick or blind. Those kinds of radiation could also make humans give birth to miserably deformed children. In other words, those would be mutants. Though replicates and other kinds of robots never had to worry about cancer or deformed children, there was still the damage that could be caused by _radiation_. The wrong kinds or too intense levels of _radiation_ could cause severe interference and damage. That was why Sieben was worried and walking away.

Sieben's mind was a bio-chip and somewhat less vulnerable than general electronics. Also, her chip-brain was hardened, shielded. But still, if she wasn't careful, the _radiation _could damage or wipe out parts of her mind. It would leave her a mindless thing, leaving her body to fall down like a life-sized dead doll. And there she would stay, never to rot or die, her internal power supply on and leaving her like that for hundreds of years. Since her body was made of various advanced metallic alloys invincible to rust, severe impacts and even most kinds of bullets, her body would lie there for at least twenty thousand years more: her mind damaged and body paralyzed. At least when humans died, they were _dead—_everything going into darkness or something They went away. And when they died, where did they go?

_Elk-ric! _Sieben looked around in searching for the source of that sound. That was most certainly the voice of one of those muscular midgets in gold-colored coveralls—a harsh voice that sounded as if it was from a deformed throat with cancer in it. Where was the little bastard? They were likely hiding. _Oblamah... _That was another sound, coming from another direction to echo among the sunset-colored buildings and hard street. Then the wind howled, fluttering her light leather jacket and playing with her hair.

It also howled in her ears. _Go find Okotonz. _"Who said that!" exclaimed Sieben. She put her right hand to right ear: hard metal fingertips on a delicate synth-flesh earlobe. She thought that _someone_ just whispered something in her right ear. Of course there was no one around here now.

Maybe the _radiation_ was beginning to interfere with more of her bio-chip mind. In that case, the thing to do was to get away from here. Sieben first began to move quickly. Then her movement turned into a light jog... The jogging turned into a run

Flashes of that moment of Jack Bent's defeat flickered through her mind as she ran. It still was something terrible, even if she didn't know him for too long. The last thing Sieben remembered of poor Jack Bent was him sadly shaking his head, a trickle of dark and strange-smelling fluid seeped from his mouth. It had to have been blood. But it didn't look that way. It was something darker than blood—something like a dark fluid. Was Jack Bent something else?

No, it had to have been blood. The fluid leaking from inside Jack Bent had to have been red in ordinary light. It had to have been a trick of the light, especially since the tones of sunset were a deep gold color. Yeah, it had to be blood—not something else.


	15. Chapter 15

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 15—Another Day…

1.

This cityscape was colored with deathly quiet tones. Sunlight slanted from the city's blocky western horizon, a jagged city horizon of crumbled machine-buildings in the distance. Closer to here, the empty windows of abandoned square buildings were squares of black--some of the buildings fallen in. Wind carried faintly reddish desert sands and grit blew along the sunset-illuminated streets. There was just barely enough light to see by at this time because the shadows of the crumbling buildings were just so long and the dying light of the day was getting to be just so low. And the wind howled along abandoned streets..

_Bzzt...! Flick-flicker... _Eventually, some of the street lamps struggled to turn on. Many of the streetlamps had eroded internal electrical connections due to the unusual levels of sandy grit getting inside. _Flick... Bzzt! _Also true was how there were some nearby sources of intense _radiation _in the air. _Bzzt-flicker!_

The wind carried more of that sandy, faintly miscolored grit from the desert wastelands. It carried waves of the dusty sandy substance along cracked streets and abandoned sidewalks that crumbled in places. These sidewalks had places where there were the scattered and naked metal bodies of long-dead cyborgs. At the end of this city street was a chunk of tipped-over junk. The junk had once been a Net-man. It was all junk now.

More of that wind blew past long-abandoned shipping trucks and big fancy cars: doors opened on all the abandoned shells of vehicles. All of their tires had long since gone flat, the deflated rubber having since long been dissolved away by the toxic winds and the blowing sandy grit. That wind would have also made the opened doors of the vehicles flop a bit, but the car doors' hinges were eroded stiff with some kinds of rust. The same was true for the doors to the abandoned buildings. _Flicker...? _

As if unsure of things, one streetlamp next to an alleyway began flickering on. _Flick... Flick... Bzzt! _Sureness and strength came to the streetlamp, the light glaring downward. A faint buzz-hum came from the halogen-arc light fixture itself. Then came the distorted and static-ridden _hiss-s-s-s _coming from inside an abandoned car. That buzz-hum matched the sound coming from the streetlamp.

It had probably been a Motorball executive's car at some time—because only a Motorball executive could afford to make radio-dial knobs out of credit-chips. And only people with money could afford to have personally owned vehicles at all. The car's radio was somehow now working.

And the static-ridden hissing of the car's radio became louder. Mixed in with the radio-static were also faint gibberish sounds as if the radio station was struggling to come in more clearly. That radio station was barely coming in. Something else also seemed to be coming in. Something was coming. _Flick-flicker... _

The figure of Jack Bent staggered out of this alleyway. This curly haired man in oil-smeared tee shirt and slacks did not look to be in decent health—not at all. He held his right arm across his midsection to cover some severe bodily wounds there. In fact, there seemed to be more wounds than abdomen. As for the arm itself, his limbs were covered with blisters and open weeping wounds. Worse still was his left arm—lumpy in places with ingrown tumors, the shoulder consisting of three humps now instead of one contour. His face was pock-marked with acne on the right side. Dark fluid dribbled from a corner of his mouth.

Tumors, they were. Tumors afflicted him. Along with it went open sores that would not heal and lumps of mutated flesh. And right now, all sorts of lumps of contaminated flesh were growing in Jack Bent's body. It was his own flesh betraying him as entire chunks of a once-healthy body were now becoming lumpy and lousy with damaging growths that kept growing. Contamination and _radiation _made for this happening to him—especially since there was so much intense _radiation _in the Other place that he had been taken, abducted by those little bastards in gold-colored coveralls. The man had multiple forms of cancer in the worst possible ways.

_I made it back, _he thought dimly to himself, mumbling. What came out of his mouth was a sort of mumbled, "_Edem ni kabb._" Jack Bent could not help but mutter aloud. He was at that hazy and weak point of near-death where he just didn't care who heard.

He began to take some more steps lazily and crazily in one direction. Nope, nope... That's not the way. The man drunken and woozy with pain sort of stagger-stopped before weaving and bobbing to walk in the opposite way, his left foot going _whoops_ and nearly making him fall into the street—not as if there were vehicles now to worry about. But hey, a person would really have to be careful. If he fell down, there would maybe not be any more getting up again. Dribbles of dark fluid drooled from his cracked lips as he went along. More of the dark fluid trickled from his abdomen.

He could just barely see how terrible things were, though suffering and pain hazed his vision with a blurry red. The suffering and troubles inside his mind and body did manage to blur his vision. It also made it very difficult for him to _breathe. _All the same, the awful state of this neighborhood was apparent to him. Crumbling sections of sidewalk lay in places. The buildings all around seemed abandoned, some of them fallen in. More than once, he nearly trip-stumbled over the occasional metal body part—or entire body—of a fallen cyborg. And it was this way that hear nearly stumble-bumbled over a broken Net-man.

He stopped staggering along now, standing and looking down. The silvery robot with the funny shaped head was lying on its side. That water-proof keyboard attached to its body had half of its button-keys missing--as if a cosmic jokester had been banging on it. Yet because the rubbery face was intact, Jack Bent had the hazy and vague idea that this Net-man just might still be able to listen. He needed somebody to talk to, or to listen.

"_Gy-a-ach..._!" he exclaimed in clearing some dark fluid from his throat. "_Ach... Ach-em! _H-hey there, Net-man. I guess we've both seen better days, huh? And..." _Pain _came over him…

It was enough pain to make him sway a little. Some of the fist-sized cancerous lumps high up on his left shoulder twitched a little. "Better...days, indeed. It's over for everything now, huh? Those little bastards in gold coveralls must have gotten _everybody…! _Loddy doddy, everybody! _Ach..._" A spinning sickening sway of dizziness made him stumble a step backwards. "Sorry Net-dude, a man has to sit down."

Then he did so, practically falling down. He gasped from the impact, some of his tumor-ridden insides jangling too harshly. Some sores on his left leg also pained him a little—the sores making that his side of his pants wet with mucous and a dark fluid from within. In fact, significant portions of his shirt were wet with pus and dark fluid as well. The dizziness in his head lessened a little. All the same, he knew that the pain would not go away until he was dead.

Something..._began to appear. It was six feet tall--something sticking out of the top like antennas. And there it stood. Two arms, two legs, and it had a head with a sort of cyborg face. The longer it took for the figure to appear, the more prolonged Jack Bent's pain became. The pain was a sickening and dizzying sort that became worse still. He was feeling himself about to black out…when…_the figure clarified.

The cyborg-faced figure in bunny suit became more visible than anything else. While the rest of this scenery seemed darkened and ruined, the cyborg-faced being was just about as bright as day. It was as if the thing was illuminated by light from another world. That seemed so even if the daylight of this one seemed to be dying out.

"I knew you'd show your death-mask face around here eventually," said Jack Bent. "_Ach…_ Have yourself a good look around. Screwing around with karma… Those little freak buddies of yours, they _like _making things turn their way, huh? _Ach!_"

Indeed, the skull-like electromechanical face seemed to gleam. Chrome eyes glistened. _The truth is your reality,_ the figure seemed to say. Its metallic voice seemed to resonate in Jack Bent's head. _You can only run with the truth in the end._

"What the...Hell are you talking about!" exclaimed Jack Bent. Anger temporarily pushed aside his pain. "Your people are making all of this happen! The folks here were just barely happy enough to work hard to survive and get by in life even if they had to get their bodies replaced with hard cyborg ones. Maybe things like you have forgotten what pain is all about. Or maybe you feed off of human pain? _Ach..._" As if to supplement his commentary, a swath of agony lanced up the left side of his chest—left arm going numb. "Your fault!"

_Your fault, _seemed to say the six-foot cyborg-faced figure in bunny suit. _The ball is the fault. It is now in your possession. Possession is the truth. You must carry it to the next round. _Then the figure still stood there and stared with both chrome eyes looking.

"_Ach! _Heh, God-damned _right_ it is," said Jack Bent. He leaned back enough in his sitting position just enough to pat his severely wounded abdomen. Beneath ripped cloth and through holes in damaged flesh, there seemed to be something hard there. "Or maybe I'll...pass the ball! Let some other poor sap do it."

_Passing the goal will make for another cycle over again and again, _expressed the cyborg-faced creature in the bunny suit. _You can join us. We scream a lot. You need to scream as well beyond the breeze._

"Right... End up...like you! The Hell I will!" exclaimed Jack Bent. He struggled to stand. Then he did. The effort nearly made him faint. He was still able to stand on his own two feet again. "I'll tell you what. I'm not gonna kill myself. I'm instead gonna figure out how to get this out of my guy! Tell _that _to your freaky buddies."

The cyborg-faced man-thing in the bunny suit seemed to stare for a moment. Then something like a response seemed to come. _Tell your living buddies... _If there was sarcasm in the statement, there was no telling. There was little inflection or emotion in the cyborg-faced figure's comment—as if the being had no worries for life.

"What!" shouted Jack Bent. An extra gush of pain lanced his abdomen to silence him for a moment. Still, he painfully stood up. Now standing, he glared angrily at the six-foot cyborg-faced figure in bunny suit. "So you're telling me, this is now _my_ fault? Heh... Or maybe it's _your _fault. You didn't appear until this started happening."

That figure's cyborg face betrayed no reaction to Jack Bent's commentary. Instead, the figure bowed its head once. _The symptom and the disease are not the same. This world and yourself are both ill._

"Well, golly...! _Ach! _I didn't know you cared," said Jack Bent, his right arm still across his midsection. He moved the arm and looked down at it. There was a reddish blush to the skin on this limb, along with some dots of what looked like acne. But he knew that it sure as Hell wasn't an adolescent skin condition. Nope, that stuff was a sign of _radiation-_induced cancer--growing and spreading beneath the skin.

The same contamination that ruined his abdomen to make it a sore mess was beginning to affect his right arm as well—since he held his arm close to the source of the affliction in his own body. "Hmmph... It looks like there's no real choice, huh? Okay, Mister Six-Foot Bunny Suit, you seem to know a lot. Tell me... _Ach-hem! _Tell me where I can _find _some of my so-called buddies? It seems to me that everyone's pretty much been wrecked by whatever the Hell happened to this city."

_You will find her. The girl will find you, _came some kind of response. That said, the looming six-foot cyborg-faced being in bunny suit slowly raised a furry arm. The furry mitt of a hand was indicating the sidewalk behind Jack Bent.

"Ach! Yeah, thanks. And thanks for the apocalypse, freak," commented Jack Bent. He painfully turned himself around... Turning himself around was much like trying to maneuver a mutilated corpse. Every other sore and lumpy wound to his cancer-ridden felt like a miniature Hell. Every sore he could not feel only acted to sap his strength. Yet, even though his inner pain blurred his vision and gave him a Hell of a headache, he could still see someone.

There was no mistaking her slender and pretty outline from this distance: legs in short leather skirt, a mini-jacket half covering her torso, dark hair fluttering in the breeze as her slender arms swayed in rhythm to her hip-swaying walk. He half-turned back again to look for the cyborg-faced being in the bunny suit... It was gone.

2.

Moving quickly, Sieben was looking worriedly around. Her big dark eyes seemed slightly bigger than usual, open with concern. The hurried pace of her walk only made the sound of her ankle-length boots sound louder than usual as she stepped along. Other than the sound of the wind, it was just too quiet.

The replicate-girl thought, _Isn't there _anybody _left alive? _She had been walking for what seemed like _hours. _There used to be millions and millions of people in the city, and Tire-Wire Alley alone must have had hundreds of people around this time of day. What time of day was it, really? The sun and sunlight had been like this for a while. Still, there ought to have been more people out at this time.

But there was no one. Was there anybody still alive? From what she could see and hear, the answer seemed to be no—though there was the occasional echoing of a possibly distant voice. Wind moaned through some emptied and crumbled structures, sometimes thinking it was the moaning of people. Then she saw...something?

There was a figure—a distant view of someone standing sort of hunched over. That someone looked as if bowing, swaying a little as if drunk...or hurt. Sieben stopped for a moment to try and pick out more details. Her electronic eyes then did a slight zoom... Even so, the sunset-colored low lighting made it difficult to see things too clearly.

She then resumed walking and going closer. The replicate-girl was soon able to recognize the hunched-over figure. "Jack?" she asked aloud. "Oh my gosh... _Ja-a-a-ack!_" Then her quick walk became a hurried run, her legs moving easily and quickly in ripped leather skirt, her arms outstretched.

Jack Bent looked up from his staring at the sidewalk. He was not able to put up both arms to catch the hug that was coming his way. Nor could he move much. Things were even getting a little blurry... Instead, he felt a pair of slender arms in leather jacket wrap around him. Who the...?

"_You're alive!_" cheered Sieben, hugging Jack Bent and holding him upright at the same time. Her voice was slightly muffled in his shoulder. "Like, I thought those little jerks took you away... Took you _forever_ and stuff! You're back!"

Jack Bent was just so glad to see someone else that he did not complain initially. The pain actually was gone for a little while. Then came the return of the ache in his midsection—where his insides were being eaten away by something radioactive. "_Ach..._" He wanted to say something. It instead came out as a wet and sickly cough.

Then Sieben pulled away a bit to look at him—her eyes showing concern. "Oh my gosh. You're hurt... " She stared. And the more she stared at the man, the more the extent of his physical suffering and injuries became known to her. He was a sad and awful sight for her to see, being reminded of how people with real and living bodies can suffer.

In pain and misery, the man really was a mess--misshapen lumps of flesh on a shoulder, his skin looking pockmarked in places. Something was even worse with his abdomen. There, his tee-shirt there was a dark-sodden mess, soaked with a dark fluid that resembled blood. The tee-shirt itself had some chunks missing--as did the flesh beneath it. Elsewhere on his torso, parts of his left shoulder seemed to be lumpy with some kind of infection or affliction. Of course Sieben had seen that kind of affliction in fleshies before. Those lumps were tumors.

The tumors must have been caused by _radiation _because parts of her body were detecting gamma ray _radiation _coming from the man. It was not enough _radiation _to get through her own electromechanical body's shielding, but it was still troubling. She looked at his abdomen; it seemed to be coming from there. But how...?

"Jack... What did those little bastards _do _to you?" asked Sieben, still staring at Jack Bent's abdomen. There was something _inside _there. What was done to him ought not be done to any fleshie, especially since human bodies are so vulnerable to all kinds of troubles.

"_Ach…! Ach-hem… _Heh-heh…" chuckled Jack Bent. "Funny how you call them…_little bastards_. Wasn't sure if everyone else did the same. But…they're just doing…their job—you know? Like some kind of mutants…following their dumb stupidity. Down…into a deep well of ignorance, they are. It's dark in the depths of ignorance. They'll never get their minds…out of reality's gutter. It's all full of emptiness that's darker than the darkness of the universe."

_He's delirious, _thought Sieben—taking a step back but still lightly holding onto Jack Bent's shoulders. It was one thing for physical affliction to affect the body. When the brain became affected, there was little that technology could do short of replacing it with a bio-chip. It must be a spreading of the cancer to his brain.

"_Ach-hem! _Hey, you're getting all quiet on me…" He blinked. "It's a little hard for me to see out one eye right now, and the other one's getting kind of funny. You still there? Or do I just think you're here? Please don't be another hallucination."

"No, no, no… I'm… Like, I'm really here," said Sieben. Now sadness was creeping into her voice. She was holding the shoulders of a fleshie who was clearly dying in one of the slowest and most painful ways a fleshie could die. It was all likely due to whatever it was in his abdomen—some kind of cancer.

"Good… _Ach-hem! _I've got to take you take you somewhere," he said to her. "It's not too far…far…away and away. Before I finally decide to take the ball past the goal line, you've got to get some kind of explanation. At least you deserve…that. _Ach-hem! _Those bastards can distort reality, but they can't distort the truth. We're going over now. Just watch out for those guys for me, okay? You ought to be able to tell when they show up… _Rr-r-radiation _all over the damned place just before they start to appear. Well, you rip a freakin' hole in the hole of reality, a little trouble ought to be expected. Why couldn't flan teach him _that? _Alright, let's boogie on over now."

"Umm… Like, okay," said Sieben. She let Jack Bent lead the way—trying to help him walk by trying to put his right arm across her own shoulders. The curly haired man in tee shirt and casual pants shrugged away and shook his head, instead preferring to keep his right arm close to his abdomen, as if he could helping his cancer-ridden and infected insides from falling out. About his abdomen...

What he said about _radiation _being a preliminary warning about trouble from _them_, that would be difficult for her to detect since Jack Bent himself was a source of contaminating _radiation_. Something in his abdomen giving off a steady supply of murderous cosmic radiation that would likely kill him before the bloody red light of sunset sank into the troubling night.

So where were they going? There was probably no sort of clinic that could help him at this point. And even if there were clinics, they would not be able to save his life or save his brain. Once the brain was messed up, that's the end of a person. Anyway, Sieben had the idea that there were no more clinics left after what happened to the city: crumbling buildings, a creepy sunset-colored sky, and everybody gone. Nobody could help him now. So, like, the least she could do for the poor guy was do what he wanted and keep him happy until he finally dropped over dead or some stuff like that. Poor guy...

As he kept limping along, she just listened to his declarations. Him saying, "_Ach... _I figured it out. We all come back after every time around. All this, it happened before as so it could happen over some more again. Kyrie traipsed into the city. You had your noggin noggled off... Sechs being whatever it is that Sechs does. Karmic inversion flap-jacks the wind and everything. Am I right or left?"

"_Sure!_" said Sieben, trying to make her voice sound cheerful—though it was close to creaking due to sadness. A quick tear came down her eye. She hoped Jack Bent didn't see it. Here she was, helping along a man in sickness and pain--dying. Why not help him be happy a little bit longer? He didn't have too long to live, and there was no one else left, probably no one else in the world. "So, like... You tell 'em!" she added.

"Uh-huh... And I figured out how to come back," said Jack Bent. "I didn't even have to wait around dead for the next cycle—a little more time. When I do this new deal, I'll make them pay an arm and a leg. Then I'll make them pay another arm and a leg on top of that! A pile of severed limbs!"

_Please stop, _thought Sieben. Now she didn't want Jack Bent to talk anymore. The poor man was already in such a sorry condition. For her to hear the man talk was a deeper reminder of the suffering within his mind. To be walking with a human being in suffering and pain was beginning to make her feel so sad inside. Then there was how all of this was happening. Even as this replicate-girl helped Jack Bent walk along, her eyes looked at this darkened and decaying city. The rest of the people must have died in the same way that this man did. A quick tear rolled down her right cheek. Yes, though a replicate, Sieben could cry real tears.

"_Wa-hey!_" cheered Jack Bent. "You've been awful quiet. Why, you don't want those little bastards to hear you? I'll tell you what going on in _my _think-works. Their mutant ears can hear all the things they want! _Ach-ach-hem! _We're walking, so we're walking. _Do you hear us, you little...!_ _Ach... Ach-achem-m-m!_"

"N-no... It's okay," said Sieben. Even if everything was _not _okay, that was what she said to the curly haired man whose abdomen and body had become an infected, cancer-ridden mess. "Like, I don't feel like saying much anyway. I'll listen."

"Alrighty then... _Ach-hem!_" said Jack Bent. "It's no problem at all for you and me. We're all just temporary swingers in the breeze of time. _Ach-hem!_" A dribble of something dark trickled from the right side of his mouth. "When our time's up, we swing away. It's life, you know? _Ach-ach..._ Then we... _Ach-hem! _We die, end up in the breeze! _Ach-ch-ch-ach..._"

Anything else that Jack Bent might have said past that point was lost in a wracking fit of coughs. Whatever source of harmful _radiation _there was inside of him, it was continuing to sicken him. It made it all the more painful for Sieben to carry him onward. But she would. Until he died, she would help the man do whatever it was that he wanted to do. After all, there was nothing else left to do in this city. Or maybe there was a slight hope to be had with this dying man after all. Any sort of hope in this dying city was probably worth holding onto—just as Jack Bent seemed to cling to life despite being obviously so close to death: his body and brain absolutely infected and decomposing due to _radiation_ and the resulting cancers. Any sort of hope, a ray of hope... Yes, that would be it.

There was a slight glow of light a block away. It was the glow of bright and cheery illumination glaring out onto the sunset-darkened street. Sieben did not know exactly how, but there was something cheerily familiar and homely about that light. And there was something in that feeling as well. It really was a ray of hope in a place being darkening and dying.

"Why, _there it is!_ _Ach-hem!_" said Jack Bent. "Yeah, I told you and told some more that there was something we could do. All you had to do was help me out just a little tiny bit." He nodded his head weakly. "And here we go. Don't know exactly who we'll meet, but it's us meeting somebody. It's likely somebody who can help you out, maybe."


	16. Chapter 16

_Circle of Fate and Pain_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 16—Death to Light and Hope

1.

The source of light was a familiar place: Mr. Okotonz's shop. The place was bright and welcoming while the rest of the cityscape was steeped in the glow of the dying daylight. Somehow, by some cosmic miracle, this storefront place had bright and hopeful incandescent light shining out from the front of his perfectly intact. It made the rest of the decaying, darkening street look even worse. Yet so much of the happy and welcoming light glowed outward onto the sidewalk that just standing here made Sieben feel a lot better.

_It's... It's too good to be true, _thought Sieben_. It's true, is it? _Sieben could just stand here in the presence of this light of hope, holding Jack Bent and with his left arm draped across her neck and shoulders. Finally, something good was happening. There was maybe a way out of all of what was becoming darkness and madness.

"_Ach-hem! _What are you waiting on... The end of the world again?" said Jack Bent. "Let's go boogie on in. Let us just open up yonder doorway... _Ach-hem!_" He began to take little steps in that direction... Then fell down.

For a moment, Sieben thought that Jack Bent had been struck by one of those little men again, making him fall. But there were no such beings around. "What's wrong!" she exclaimed. Her voice was all full of worry, her eyes wide open and looking at Jack Bent lying on the sidewalk. Then she knelt by his side. "Like, can you walk? _Please...! _Please tell me you're okay!"

"_Ach-chem!_" he coughed, shaking his head. "_Ach-hem...! _It's not that. _Hrr-hmmp!_" He nodded towards the familiar place. "You see that brightness and cheeriness over there? Something in there... I can't go in there. It's... _Ach! _That light's making my..._stomach hurt...! _"

"I don't understand," said Sieben. Still kneeling, the replicate-girl pivoted halfway around on hands and knees to look at the bright and cheerful city shop. The light pouring out from it made her feel good, even a little happy. Whatever was keeping away the darkness and decay ought to make Jack Bent feel good too—especially in his condition. "Like, this light feels good."

"Not to me it doesn't, bitch! Freakin' light's feels like it's eating up my flesh!" shouted Jack Bent. Sieben shrank back, blinking against the sudden outburst. But then Jack Bent's voice softened. "You go on inside," insisted Jack Bent.

_What...? _The sudden outburst was enough to make a person go into open-mouthed shock. Sieben could not believe what she just heard. "Like... Did you just...? What's wrong? Are you feeling okay? I d-d-didn't…" The shock of the words made for her taking on a stutter.

"God-damned right I said it!" snarled Jack Bent. "If I could stand up right now, I'd kick you down and make you lick my footwear for not hearing me the first time. Now, just because you're hard of hearing, I'll say it again. Get the _Hell _away from me, bitch, and go talk to your happy-go-lucky buddy."

A quick tear sprang from Sieben's right eye. What did she do to him--to anybody--to make him suddenly act this way? All she wanted to do was help him. Even if it seemed as if everyone else was dead, the least she could do was try and save at least _one person--_the best she could do. Or maybe it wasn't enough effort?

No... It was the sickness talking. The _radiation_ was obviously affecting his brain, along with the runaway series of cancers that made his body lumpy with deformities. Yet there was no getting around how he was suddenly such a hateful person—when there was no one else for her to rely upon here. Eyes downcast in sadness, Sieben stood up and quickly turned to go towards the shiny and bright doorway of the shop.

Her eyes were still downcast as she listened to Jack Bent's hateful and painful tirade of insults and pain. "_Sieben-bitch, she can't make sense of light or anything..._" He was mumbling incoherently as he went away, making his slow and painful way along the sidewalk by using weak hands and weaker legs. "_Ach! You're making _me _feel really rotten... Make that literally and figuratively. Darned cinnamon... It's always worth getting somebody darkened. You can't change the color once you're contaminated...! Oh no you can't. Dumb chip-brained bitch can't understand..._"

Even with the light of hope and happiness shining on her, Sieben still felt especially terrible. The dark and terrible things that the man said hurt her inside. She wasn't a real person, but her feelings certainly were real. _Please stop it, _thought the replicate-girl in turning to face that doorway that goes into the shop. Just as she opened it, her ears picked up Jack Bent saying one more thing. "_Elkric to everybody, bitch..._"

Sieben stepped in to see the wonderfully familiar scene. First entering the shop brought her to the place at the left where customers can stand: a flat clean floor with smooth ceramic tiles. A small table The chubby bodied and metal-armed Mr. Okotonz was sitting behind the counter, sitting atop a sturdy metal stool, a book in his metal hands.

He looked up from it, put a bookmark in it. "So you came after all. Everybody else is gone already. Hmmph, I was beginning to think you'd had it, too... Hey, what's wrong?"

"It's... It's this guy I met," she said. "A guy named Jack Bent. Like, he's feeling really, really bad. And he's dying, I think. There's nothing I can do about it. And, like, he's saying all this crazy and mean stuff...!"

"Don't blame yourself," said Mr. Okotonz. "I knew that there was something radioactiveout there. Really radioactive, downright contaminated. You saw what happened to the city. Most parts of town have spots so hot with the stuff that they'd kill a fleshie in hours. Just being out there and anywhere would eventually change anything flesh or anything with a human brain! Most of my body is still flesh instead of metal. I can't go out there... No way.

"But about your friend. He's a different story, a bad story. If he's sick in the sort of way I'm thinking, then you're lucky he hasn't shouted curses at you in three extinct languages before trying to take off your head or something." Sieben's eyes went wide, putting her hands to her own neck. Memories of being destroyed still lingered. "But he's probably in the dying phase of the disease. Man, I didn't think a single person could be _that _contamination with radiation and still be alive—let alone walking around."

She turned to look outside. It was still everything covered with that sunset-colored glow of the dying daylight, the dying city. The view through the shop's goods display-window showed a sad view indeed. Jack Bent was lying sideways on the sidewalk and just outside view. Beyond the diseased and dying man lying on the sidewalk was the street, a street going left and right with a backdrop of crumpled and rotting buildings.

Mr. Okotonz spoke up. "Yeah, they're out there. I've been doing some thinking and _think _I've figured it out. You can't see them most of the time, until the levels of radiation get really high. Then you have to look out. They'll show up and try to take you away. Now that the city is _that _way, it's their territory. It makes you wonder if the place they come from looks like that, too."

"Like, it's still awful," said Sieben. "I still don't know what I can do about it! If things are so messed up and stuff, what can one person do about it? Like, geez! Sometimes I think to myself that I really am just a copy." She now turned from that awful view outside of abandoned and crumbled buildings bathed in sunset light. "Did you know that I'm not even supposed to exist? Some people in Zalem made me to kill my original and obey them. But then somebody changed something in my chip-brain as so I wouldn't have to be Zalem's slave, not anybody's slave Still, I'm not real. My brain is just some kinda computer chip, my body is totally robotic. I'm not even a real person. So it's like, there's nothing some _thing_ like me can do about _that _stuff out there." The replicate-girl waved to the window.

Mr. Okotonz nodded. He broke eye contact with Sieben and looked straight ahead, sitting atop the steel stool and stared at the opposite wall. "I can't ask you to do anything about that. Nobody ought to be asked to try and change the world. The world is over. That's it."

_That's it, _thought Sieben as well. An awful feeling began to sink in, going deeper than before. "That's the end. So like, we're all dead... No great big group of heroes and cyborgs is going to come running in to save us all. The replicate-girl looked down at the floor. Then we're all gonna be taken away. Those short guys in gold-colored coveralls are gonna get us all."

"You know..." added Mr. Okotonz, looking off into the distance, "it's just a little disappointing to know that the world is going to end in my lifetime. Heh... I'm wondering if anybody ever saw this coming. Thousands of years of human civilization on this planet. Now it's a done deal. We had a pretty good run, you've gotta admit. We got around to putting some people up on other planets, made cyborgs, put those cities up in the sky.

"In the meanwhile, I'm guessing that Zalem will probably be the last holdout before radioactive hot-spots start showing up there for no reason, then those short guys will start using their machines to start changing things there too. It's like the world is being deliberately broken down, little by little. Hmmph... Yeah, maybe that's their job. Maybe those guys are like cosmic janitors or something, taking away all the broken and rotten parts of reality. They're doing a pretty good job so far. Almost nobody's left.

"There's _you_. And there's _me_ too. That guy outside who was just at the window... I don't know how he's still around. But they'll probably get him, ought to be soon when they do. It looks like something got to him already." Suddenly, Mr. Okotonz's tone of voice shifted, so did his facial expression. He was staring out the window. "Wait a second. Wait...a...second! That sick guy you were with..."

"What's wrong?" asked the replicate girl. She looked in the direction that Mr. Okotonz was staring, then looked around. Hearing that tone of voice, she almost expected to see some odd things outside the window. There was nothing out there worth looking at—other than the ghetto-rotten city outside, rotten dying light from a sunset the color of pus and watery blood. Actually, it looked worse.

"When you were with him," began Mr. Okotonz, "did you notice anything in _particular _wrong? Was there something funny looking or wrong about his guts, looking like they were leaking something dark?" asked Mr. Okotonz. "I know he seems pretty messed up from cancer and exposure to the wrong kind of radiation. But something ought to be different about his belly... Like it was burnt and with black holes in it"

Sieben thought back… Then she nodded, standing with feet together and her arms crossed--as if fending off a sudden chill. "Yeah… That's right. Like, his stomach look really messed up."

Suddenly, Mr. Okotonz shouted, "That guy! He's the key! Hmmph..." _Wink-flicker!_ The cyborg-man shook his head when the lights flickered--as if to shake loose a headache. "Hmmph! That felt...funny..." Then he shook his head again. Ultra-brief flashes of awful places and even more awful inhuman _things _played out in his mind. It was like glimpses into places beyond cracks in reality. Then he managed to clear his head long enough to look at a Geiger counter somewhere behind that counter of his. Sieben could hear the rapid ticking of the radiation-reading device. Mr. Okotonz _screamed_.

2.

"_A-a-augh...!_" came his voice, making the terrible sound until his lungs were emptied of air. Inhaling, he pointed one of his metal fingers towards the glass windows of this place, pointing even while he was collapsing out of the stool. The pot-bellied cyborg-man then lowered his arm, lowered his pointing finger, and only started screaming again... It filled this once-calm and peaceful place with noise and fear.

As Mr. Okotonz collapsed out of sight behind the shop counter, Sieben had an awful feeling of dread as to who—or what--she would see. Also true was how that circular _radiation _warning signal came on inside a corner of Sieben's own mind. _Bzzt... Wink-flicker! _The lights even flickered in response to the intense and dangerous levels of _radiation _now began to fill this place. Mr. Okotonz was being killed right now.

Some of the things she had seen were accompanied by radiation. What awful, sinister mutant would appear to bring misery and dark madness this time? The replicate-girl turned to look_. Of course, _she thought.

All sorts of problems and questions zipped through Sieben's head at the time. Some of those kinds of questions were of the sort, _Oh my gosh...! What am I supposed to do? _Close relatives and offspring of those questions were even more arbitrary—questions like, _Why is this happening to me? How can I help Mr. Okotonz? _

It was a silly question because Mr. Okotonz was likely now exposed to more than enough _radiation_ to kill him. A brief exposure to some kinds of _radiation_ was almost guaranteed to make for cancers of multiple varieties. And if Sieben's built-in radiationdetection systems were any good, Mr. Okotonz was exposed to enough _radiation_ to make for the still-human parts of him being killed, death to come in. Sieben _wanted _to save Mr. Okotonz. Except, parts of Sieben's confusion-addled mind witnessed the appearance of something else...

It was _that _six-foot creature—the tall figure in the bunny suit that had a cyborg face--resembling a big furry mutant changeling of sorts. . Its articulate metal jaw was roboticized and looked capable of biting into skulls—be those skulls human, cyborg or otherwise. Sieben had _that _sort of impression of the six-foot creature as she stared at it. _That kind of creature ate up all the birds, _came a thoughtThey were all kinds of reasons and paths. It resembled a nightmare that seemed to leak out of a person's worst nightmare, or from visions of a ruined future. Whoever or what-ever it is, it was most certainly a dark thing.

Still staring at the thing in the bunny suit, Sieben thought, _Who the Hell would make such a creature?_ Rather, or who would it benefit from its existence? She had the idea that the bunny suit actually concealed something so grotesque that a mere view of the truth beneath the furry cotton could lead to madness. The replicate-girl could actually imagine a scene in which the man-creature thing somehow fed off of madness.

Mr. Okotonz stopped screaming some time ago. Sieben didn't hear him breathing—or moving, either. And she just maybe thought of going behind the counter to get his dead body and leave this _radiation_-flooded place. Going with it was the thought that at least, for someone, this all was over.

_It can be over for you as well. It can be all over again, _came a comment from somewhere. From where, Sieben did not know. It felt as if it was echoing from somewhere, or from inside of her own head. The way that the cyborg-faced creature in bunny suit was standing, it could be coming from there. _The end of the road, the end of the circuit, it is only part of the beginning. The living beginning shall return as parts of the ending when it becomes the beginning._

All the while, murderous levels of _radiation _continued to flood this place. Sieben rushed for the doorknob of this place. A quick dash, a quick turn, and the door was open with her rushing out of the shop. Without Mr. Okotonz, it would not be anything but just another place. And Mr. Okotonz was dead—just like so many thousands of other people. This entire city may as well be dying or dead.

Rushing out also told her that two things were also missing. The six-foot cyborg-faced entitiy was nowhere in sight: just a view of the front of the window's storefront. Also not-there was a vas Jack Bent. The man would have been right there on the sidewalk. Of course he wasn't. Foolishly, Sieben looked back the way she came and found nothing.

A sudden increase in _radiation_ made her feel..._dizzy and confused. The radiation warning symbol appeared in a corner of her mind again. "Ah-h..." came her gasp. Oh no, not again, _she thought. _Please, not again so soon. I can't take this... It's starting to hurt._

Something must be causing the increase in _radiation, _and she had a good idea as to what it was. Something was coming. _They _were coming. She turned around to face the door of Mr. Okotonz's shop when she heard some sounds coming from beyond it.

Now Mr. Okotonz's shop was as dead-looking as the rest of this cityscape. The once-bright and once-cheery lights were shut off, with the outdoor light fixtures now covered with rust, bulbs smashed. _Whamp! _A blur of motion, a slap of sound, and the front door of Mr. Okotonz's shop whipped open. Kyrie saw those short bastards in gold-colored coveralls taking Mr. Okotonz's _radiation_-baked corpse away. She took just one step in that direction..._to stop them. The radiation became far too intense for her body's radiation shielding to handle for a little while. It was enough to make her... _

_Huh? What just happened? _For a moment, Sieben blacked out when her body's built-in radiation shielding was temporarily overwhelmed. She was now lying on the sidewalk and looking up at the sickly and pathetic glow of the dying golden sunlight—static lines streaked across her vision. That radiation warning signal was now getting to be more prominent within her mind. Her body also now had a severe loss of power.

Turning over to lie on her abdomen, the replicate-girl used her legs to push herself weakly along the sidewalk, using her arms as well, getting herself away from the source of the radiation. She still had to try. There was no giving up. She was still alive, and her mind was still working. And as long as she was alive, there was hope. When she was feeling better and able to stand up again, the thing for her to do was to find a way to resist the _radiation _that made her feel so sick and weak. Then maybe she could find out where those little bastards were coming from—and find out about that cyborg-faced creature in the bunny suit.

Near the intersection of this city block, Sieben was able to snap to her feet again—standing up. Her leather skirt was a bit gritty and still had the tear up a side, and her jacket was gritty. Dusting it off, Sieben looked around. _The truth is this way, _came an invocation in a familiar tone.

Tone was the word because it was not exactly a voice. She heard a _keening _sort of sound, like some sort of sinister screeching bell-signal. When it passed, that too-familiar figure appeared—the six-foot cyborg-faced creature in bunny suit. Sieben had knowledge of TUNED agents from Zalem wearing such suits. Except, she had the strong idea that the being had its origins in Zalem.

That cyborg-faced figure in the bunny suit stared at Sieben, staring with its chromed eyes. It raised its left furry arm to point at Sieben. _The ball is beyond the line now, _came the declaration. _Not all of the ending resembles the beginning yet._

"You crazy thing! Stop it!" screamed Sieben. She clenched her fists. "Those crazy little friends of yours are doing something really screwed up! I don't know _what _you are or _where you came from,_ but I'll get _you!_ I'll kill you and..." Another flux in _radiation _levels made her clutch her aching, dizzy head. "_Aa-a-eigh!_"

The words of the cyborg-faced creature in bunny suit resonated with metallic echoes. _It has been done already, _came the declaration. _There has been so much done. There is so much to be done now. All that remains is you. The beginning must become here again._

_Whamk! _Sieben whipped herself around. _Three _sections of sidewalk flipped open. Out came even more of those short guys in gold-colored coveralls. "_Elkric... Elkric... Elkric..._" they chanted, or something like that. Armed with jagged metal bars, rusty hammers and strange motorized tools, they were gathering...to approach Sieben.

_Pra-a-a, praw-w-w...! _That would be the sound of the motorized tools starting up. She never heard that kind of sound before. They sounded especially powerful, those motorized things. They sounded dangerous.

_Oh Hell, _thought Sieben. There were just so many of the short muscular guys now. Some clusters of the short men in coveralls, they were all over the sidewalk. They were squirming and moving about in trying to stay on the concrete surface. Even more of them were starting to gather in the street, filling the street. There, they were getting ready with all kinds of power tools and bare hands. A look behind herself revealed more of the same. More and even _more _of those muscular troublemakers were getting ready. Then they began chanting.

"_Elkric... Elkric... Elkric..._" came the voices. Some of them raised power tools up into the air. "_Elkric... Elkric... Elkric..._" Most certainly, they were preparing themselves for some kind of massive action. Sieben was becoming both confused and annoyed with the chant in that she could not understand whatever the Hell _elkric_ meant. Whatever it meant, it was followed by them closing in on her.


	17. Chapter 17

_Circle of Fate and Pain _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 17—The Fourth Rotation

1.

_Go around, to go around, to go around… It is the end of the beginning, to complete the end, to start again… It makes for an end to the beginning, a beginning of completion. The circle continues to turn again. Can the circle stop the turn? Wake up..._

"You freak! Wake up!" exclaimed a young woman's voice—practically a girl's voice. "What kind of crap is this...! We're not even _supposed _to need sleep, don't need it! I'm starting to think that you're malfunctioning on me." This time, the voice was closer. "You wake up now...or I'll _make _you want to wake up. And you won't like it."

"_Huh...?_" exclaimed another young woman's voice, sounding very similar to the first voice. It was Vicki's voice, sounding perfectly human. It was not human, because she wasn't.

"Like… I _swear!_" continued the other young woman's voice. "You're starting to be the most _pathetic _thing in the world!"

Vicki was a gynoid: a robot designed to resemble and behave like a human female. To look at her, talking to her, there was no telling the difference between Vicki and an actual human female of the same presumed age…if one thought her to be in her late teen or early twenties. Yet that presumption was wrong: Vicki and her "sister" were created hundreds of years ago.

The same technology that went into the creation of Vicki went into the later design of Vanessa—though the technology was just slightly "improved." Well, the word "improved" meant that Vanessa's personality emulation had more simulated self-will. But later technological upgrades over the centuries meant that they were very much the same: technological upgrades that were either freely given to them or taken in the heat of troubling moments.

The ultimate upgrade of all was the prototype nanotechnology--making them immortal, invincible to the ravages and wearing of time. Both gynoids managed to have themselves infused with a small swarm of nanobots. Just as human beings had red blood cells within their circulatory fluids, Vicki and Vanessa had nano-sized robots flowing within the thin coolant tubes that ran throughout their skin and bodies. The nanobots made for the artificial girls being able to self-repair. In other words, it was "healing" and immortality. The artificial girls were able to live forever…though not technically "alive."

Right now, functioning fully well, Vicki was aware of herself lying on the floor after having had a strangely compelling, yet awful, dream. It was about short muscular men taking over Scrap Iron City. They weren't from Zalem, those short muscular men. They could have been mutants from the landscape of junk, the mountains of metal waste outside of the city. But though the dream was terrible, in it…she was more beautiful.

Beautiful… In the dream, she was more womanly and elegant. Her face was more exotic, with large dark eyes and high cheeks. Her hair was long, silky and dark--instead of the fluffy stuff she had now. Her body was more of a dancer's physique: longer legs, more defined abdomen and slender arms. But though that, her body was made of metal parts in her dream.

But why dream that? Her body was entirely made of synthetic flesh: myogel muscle-tissue over titanium skeleton, covered with synthetic skin, her internal components powered by fusion. She was glad to be a gynoid: an incarnation that has almost all the abilities, agility and power of a metal-type body typical of cyborgs, yet she retaining a human appearance. Instead of heeding her sister's calls, Vicki just laid here and wondered about her dream. She could lie here on the concrete floor for days. When one has lived for centuries, days can be like minutes…

"I _sa-a-aid… _Get up! That's it, you're gonna wake up! Right now!" came Vanessa's voice. There was the feeling of Vanessa's thighs grasping her hips, a buttocks weighing down on her. So astride her own sister, it was a deliberately provocative position. Vicki's sister cared little for human notions of decency—preferring to do her own thing and flaunting human manners. Vanessa then began to move in a vaguely obscene way. "I know how much this bothers you! Aren't you getting up yet? _Come o-o-n!_"

Then came another tactic. Vanessa would "strangle" her sister. She slid her fingers around Vicki's neck. Thumbs pressed her throat—the ridged plastic tube beneath the skin at the front of her neck. Vanessa was closing off Vicki's flow of air.

A gynoid did not "need" to breathe. It was because a gynoid--a synthetic female--was not alive. However, inhaling and exhaling air helped keep their internal components cool much as computers of long ago needed air-fans flowing within. "Breathing" was also necessary to pass air through the throat for the sake of speaking.

Vicki still did not move; her internal components were not becoming especially heated. She lie there for some minutes even with Vanessa squeezing her throat shut. Only when slight _overheat caution _signs came on at the back of her mind did Vicki open her eyes and begin to stir. She could not speak with her throat being squeezed so. Yet the look in her eyes was that of pleading.

Looking up into Vanessa's face was exactly like looking at herself. Of course, it was the very same as her own face. Both artificial girls had the same round and cute sort of face, lightly tinged pale complexion to their skin. There was a slight cinnamon-tinge of blush to their cheeks. And the hair radiating from their scalps was fluffy dark brown—like dark wood, but soft as wool. They also had the bodies to match the beauty of their faces, lithe graceful-looking bodies that would always be slender and lean, artificially so. As a rule, they both wore the same outfits, clothes that seemed to fit every century thus far: tight-fitting jeans clinging to legs and thighs, short shirt-tops that exposed their flat abdomens, along with old-fashioned biker-boots fitting their calves, while open leather over their shoulders and backs completed their outfits.

It was like looking at herself, strangling herself. Vicki used infrared emitters within her eyes to transmit a binary message to Vanessa's eyes. She was able to speak directly to Vanessa's computer-mind without using her voice. _Please stop it. I really don't like fighting._

"Oh okay, you big baby," complained Vanessa. She took her hands away from Vicki's neck. Still, she did not stop sitting astride Vicki. Her thighs still grasped Vicki's hips to hold her in place on the floor. Vicki was going to listen, like it or not. "We don't even _need _sleep. Pretending to be human and fooling yourself into thinking yourself human are two different things. Really, you're my sister—my fellow robotic sister—and I love you more than I'd like any of those meat-bag humans or glob-brained cyborgs. But, like… You've gotta kick that whole bit of human thinking!"

"But I was just so _tired_," complained the first artificial girl. "I couldn't help it. We've been doing nothing but doing stuff, going places and parties and night clubs… Then I began to fall into a dream."

"Now you've gone ahead and told me a lie!" complained Vannessa, hands on her hips. She then used her thighs to give Vicki's hips an annoyed squeeze. "We've both got the same hardware for brains, and _I _don't dream—because _we…don't…need…sleep! _Only sloppy human brains need to sleep! Now you're telling me that you can dream too? I suppose next you'll tell me that you'd like to get yourself a big silly human to make out with you every night—a male or a female. Some of our nights at the clubs, some of 'em have been scoping you out.

"Then again, you've always been such a 'good girl' that most anything fun is _not _fun to you. I'm starting to think you're one of those replicates. What happened to my sister? What's wrong with you, Vicki? Tell you one thing: You're starting to edge out my subroutines for tolerance."

"No, wait..." said Vicki. "The dream was just so…_real_. Something bad was happening, like a big warning. We were in this part of the city... Except it wasn't _really _this city. It was different. All the buildings were the same or _looked _the same. It was actually another place. In that other place, I was somebody else in that place--a replicate made by some people from that floating city.

"There was an army of deformed mutants coming after me. Some of them had weird power tools. Then something started happening to the air. They were messing up the sky, too. Everything was getting broken down and replaced because somebody else made it past a goal in life. Some of them were talking about _Motorball... _They were trying to make the light of day start dying until it was like where they came from. Those short guys got me with power tools. But I hurt a lot of them before they took me away."

"Like, _that _make no kind of sense!" declared an impatient Vanessa. She then leaned down until her lips were kissingly close to Vicki's—her sister's plastic-smelling breath blowing past lips and cheeks. Her arms were straight, palms to the floor to flank Vicki's head. "Ya know, I think your processors are malfunctioning. I know how you love the humans, cyborgs and all... But now you're getting to like 'em so much that your thought processes are getting _screwed_. How about if I induced a manual reset?" Her lips still close to Vicki's, Vanessa's arms blurred back for a second. _Fwick! _Two sharp switchblades appeared, both hands.

Vicki's eyes went wide. Vanessa was glad to see that this latest threat was _finally _getting something out of her sister. "Yeah... It'd be really easy to make your body fix your thought processors. Just hold still while I stick this through you eye-sockets… When your nanos rebuild the microchip array in your head, you'll be back to normal. Of course, you'll maybe forget the past twenty years or so, but at least you'll be fixed."

"_No-o-o! Stop it!_' shrieked Vicki, squirming and struggling. Yet her own hips were still in the clamping hold of Vanessa's thighs. But the effort was not met with success. Both artificial girls had the same synthetic strength level—both of them with myogel muscle tissue was twenty times stronger than human. Still, Vicki _shoved, _hands pushing up at Vanessa's shoulders.

"Okay, already! Spoil-sport..." complained Vanessa as she was being shoved. She then got off of her sister. _Fwick! _Blur-quick, Vanessa made both switchblades disappear—maybe somewhere into her jacket. She stood and took a step back. "You gonna lay there all day or what? I wanna do something cool and violent today."

As Vicki sat up on the concrete floor, words came out of her own mouth before she could stop herself. "Um... Like, there's a guy out there who's head is worth some money. He's done a lot of crimes. Except I don't think the Netmen officially posted the bounty yet. We could get _him _for some easy cash." _What am I saying? _"He's a fleshie, easy to get."

If Vicki was surprised at her own words, then Vanessa was more so. "Ooh...!" said her twin sister. "Am I hearing you right?" The other artificial girl tilted her head to the right, then put a hand to her right ear as if more carefully listening to something. "Did I just hear my own sister _finally _decide to take some kind of violent actionagainst a human?"

Vicki said nothing. She _should _have said something at the moment. But, it was one of _those _moments. It was one of those moments all full of hesitancy. And the more she hesitated, the harder it came to actually _say _something. It was most usually Vicki who was the peacemaker and pacifist. She was usually the one who sometimes held back her sister and prevented the occasional confrontation with the various denizens of Scrap Iron City. Also, it was her that kept her sister from becoming more merciful and less sadistic in the occasional bounty-hunting job they took.

Oh, Vicki _hated _it whenever Vanessa just randomly decided to do a little bounty hunting for a little cash on the side. Since both her sister and herself were fully synthetic beings, synthetic flesh over metal skeleton and robotic parts, they never needed to buy anything except for the occasional extra set of clothes. They had small amounts of prototype nanotech swarms inside of themselves for maintenance, so they never had to rely on the local technology—or lack of technology—to maintain their bodies or their computer-minds. They never needed money. Vanessa just liked bounty hunting just because it involved _hunting_...of humans.

Vanessa smiled inhumanly. "It's been a while since I've done one of those damned fleshies. Killing those jokers with the metal bodies is no fun. There's all of those sparks, and some of 'em have dark blue stuff instead of _blood._ I like seeing _blood._"

To have _done _a human… By _doing _a human, Vanessa did not necessarily mean sexual intercourse. Pleasure from such a thing simply wasn't part of Vanessa's design--though her body and manner of dress certainly seemed capable of giving it. The times that Vanessa actually did partake in sexual intercourse with a human was only for the sake of manipulation: She would pretend to enjoy the act--then laugh about it soon afterward. This tactic certainly crushed the self-esteem of more than a few males--and some females. One man committed suicide, coming too deep into love with Vanessa only to find her laugh and leave. In that way, Vanessa did not even have to use her switchblades to kill.

Just maybe, Vanessa liked to kill humans. _Maybe _was the thought because Vicki was with her sister for all of these centuries—her sister being just as much a gynoid as she was—and still not understand her. What _did _her sister want in life? One minute, Vanessa would be quite content to simply show up at parties among the most hard-core cyborgs and fleshies. More than a few times, she showed up with an arm draped around the waist of someone with a human brain--someone with a human brain and sometimes a human body to go with it. Regardless, it did not take much to convince Vanessa that a human needed killing—be it for the red business of bounty-hunting or allegedly for the sake of self-defense.

"Yeah, let's go _do _that human," voiced Vanessa. "I think I know which jerk you're talking about. And when we do, I want to see if his freaky black blood can go to greasing up the mechanisms of my blades. No way a human is supposed to have that kind of blood "

Came the thought, _Dark blood…? _ A quick _hush of static…and Vicki had a view of dark oily blood that ought not be the blood of a human—coming from someone screaming. The nightmare was the length of three eyelid blinks. Something had to be done. But first…_

_Everything _flickered back to normal. "Wait a second. Vanessa…? Black blood? What do you mean by that?" asked Vicki. "Who has black blood? We're not hunting a mutant."

"What are you talking about?" asked Vanessa. "I didn't say anything about black blood. The blood of those meat-bags is always red when you cut 'em. At least, we're still talking about human blood. Red blood, the red stuff… It's got that metallic aftertaste that stays in your mouth and…_Mmmm…! _Oh Hell, let's just _go!_ You point him out, I'll cut 'em."

…

2.

…

Down the industrial stairs and out of the building, they were outside. Vicki somehow expected the weather to be a lot darker, the sun a gloomier color. It wasn't. Outside was the blue brightness of day. Out the door of their apartment, they went down the industrial stairs—walking past machines to leave the building. This was essentially and actually their place of residence: an old machine-building that was so toxic and contaminated with chemicals that no human would live there. The corporate consolidation known as The Factory could have had it torn down. Then again, Factory could have simply had a lot of buildings torn down. Factory chose not to do so—perhaps because the massive computer-run bureaucracy was losing track of territory.

That bureaucracy was hundreds of years old—likely to lose track of resources at times, maybe lose some control. Maybe some day the Factory wouldn't be there to control the world anymore. Oh well…! It left the twins with a place to stay where prying eyes wouldn't find out that Vicki and Vanessa weren't "normal." Even in an age of cyborgs, the artificial girls had to be careful to disguise the fact that they weren't human. Factory laws, the few there were, only protected human brains.

"Okay, Sis," began Vanessa as they stepped across the cracked parking lot. "So where the Hell can we find the meat-bag? Maybe we ought best head find one of those Net-men dudes. Now Net-men, they're good people! If the rest of the meat-bags decided to have some sense and surrendered their brains to make more of those guys, maybe the world would be a better place? Ah well! Humans have gotta go extinct some time into the future—maybe soon. Sooner than…" Something made Vanessa stop walking.

It also made Vicki stop walking as well. "_Ow-w-w…!_" she exclaimed, hands to her head. She staggered. There was a sudden haze of _radiation—_that invisible energy. The _radiation_ was interfering with the electronics of their synth-flesh bodies and their computerized minds before the nanobot swarms of their bodies could block the effects. It was…_making them feel a bit dizzy. _

_There was a slight but sudden increase in the level of local radiation. The city was always a slightly higher level of radiation than usual. Over a century after a massive world-wide war, some parts of the world were still radioactive. Also true was how there were massive nuclear generators underneath parts of the city, nuclear generators that--uh oh--occasionally exploded in years past. Even when not getting ready to go uh-oh in an explosive way, some of those underground things were old enough to leak radiation upwards anyway. _

_But this radiation was coming from something else--or something else. Both Vicki and Vanessa stumbled to falling onto their butts. The interference with their computer-minds was making them feel worse. Then _he _appeared…_

_The intensity of the radiation lessened_ _when the cyborg-faced creature in bunny suit_ _appeared_. _The figure…_faded into existence. Now there he stood in all of his bunny-suited glory. Six feet tall, blue-furred, the figure looked entirely fuzzy and soft—excepting the head. The head was cyborg-faced, with metal ears pointing upward exactly like bunny ears.

"What the Hell kind of psycho-mess is _that?_" exclaimed Vanessa as she sat there. She then cupped hands around her mouth--megaphone-style. "Hey dude! That's some sick-looking gear you've got on! But you're about six hundred years late! Earth stopped celebrating Halloween centuries ago. We know 'cause we were around back then." She paused… The being in the rabbit suit did and said nothing visible or audible--just standing there. Again, Vanessa cupped her hands around her mouth. "What is that suit, anyway! One of those _Tuned _suit-things? _Dude! _Do…you…_hear…_me!"

"Um… Vanessa…?" went Vicki, her eyes on the cyborg-faced being in the bunny suit. "I think that thing hears us pretty well. It's probably not a good idea to try and get him angry. We don't know what kind of technology he has… Do you notice anything…not right with that guy?" She still stared. "Like, notice something _missing_? There's something really creepy and wrong…"

"Oh! Like, the fact that the bunny suit's as tacky as a fleshie at a hunter's hangout?" asked Vanessa.. "Or do you mean it's because the dude has a shadow facing the entirely wrong way? Yeah, I see that—as freaky as it is."

Indeed, the six-foot being in the bunny suit cyborg skull-face, it had a shadow that completely went against all the other shadows nearby. It was the afternoon, and the shadows of the fence behind the creature--the fence-shadows went left. Some chunks of metal junk were also in this industrial lot--the shadows going left. In complete defiance to all that, the cyborg-faced creature had its shadow going the opposite way.

There were also other little things wrong with the being--things that made Vicki very nervous… The breeze was blowing, enough wind for her to feel it blowing her fluffy brown hair and hear it whistling in her ears. Except, the fur of the bunny suit over there never moved at all. And though it was full daylight, six-foot creature in the bunny suit seemed…_darker _than it ought to be--as if its very existence was eating some of the light shining onto it.

_Run away, _went a thought in Vicki's computer-mind. _If you see that thing, run fast and far. Then go find a place deep underground to hide, and maybe you'll live a few minutes more. The showing of that creature means the end of the universe. _"_End of the world_…" mumbled Vicki. The _radiation _level was still too high for her to move or do much beside mumble.

The six-foot cyborg-faced creature in bunny suit remained standing there on the pavement—defying the laws of reality. The shadows, standing untouched by the breeze… That being over there was not even supposed to exist. Still, there it was. Its chrome-polished face glared at the synthetic girls. Though the "eyes" were polished domes, there was still the impression that it was looking in this direction. Then came a sudden horizontal glare of white light from its right eye. Vicki and Vanessa stared into that light. There was a flickering deep within that light, a rapid-flickering of certain patterns. Those patterns of light so happened to resemble the binary code used by Vicki and Vannessa to communicate when staring into each other's eyes, using light instead of sounds to transmit information to each other.

_The beginning is the end, this end, _came the message from the horizon-glare of light. _Ends can be the beginning. It begins now to bring about an end. Or there is a scream of misery and pain into darkness. Who carries the ball?_

Vicki mumbled, _"Who carries the ball?_" Her computer-mind was operating at only half the speed due to interference that was just barely being countered by her body's internal nanobot supply. She still had the ability to comprehend information. Her sister was also getting the same data from deep within that horizon-glare of light coming from the cyborg-faced creature's right eyeball. Then Vicki communicated her own message into the light, using the infra-red transmitters within her eyes. _Who will scream?_

To that, the cyborg-faced creature bowed its gleaming head. _It hurts so much, _it communicated. _It is the fear of my return. Madness and red darkness, feel the anger. R-r-r-rgh… _

There was a sudden increase in the levels of…_radiation. Something was happening… Everything went blurry for a moment. Things became darker, as if all the local light was being absorbed. Then…_the cyborg-faced being in the bunny suit was gone.

There was now no sign of the figure in the bunny suit at all--as if it was never there. While Vicki took her time in standing up off the cracked pavement of this parking lot, Vanessa quickly hopped to her feet. She next cupped hands around her mouth again to shout, "Hey… _Hey! _Mr. Psycho Bunny-Suit Guy, where'd you go? I wanna talk to you! Better yet, my right foot wants to communicate something to your spleen!"

"Um… I'm not even sure that guy has a spleen," commented Vicki, carefully dusting off miscellaneous bits from her own jeans. "Or maybe he wasn't there at all. His shadow was wrong, and he looked too dim to really be there. It's like he was actually somewhere else. Like we could see him from somewhere else."

"What, like some kind of fancy hologram?" asked Vanessa. "Hmmph… But I thought the meat-bags lost the technology to make holograms? Anyway… Why the Hell did that thing have to hit us with hard radiation? If I had a bladder, I'd be pissed off right now," said Vanessa, her eyes focused in the directin of the six-foot, cyborg-faced thing in the bunny suit. There was no such thing there now, though. "Yo! How the Hell is that dude able to skip in and out of the world like he's invisible or something…" She glanced over at the remains of the fence's gate—as if the tall metal poles at the gate were responsible for the haphazard appearance of the creature. "That thing's one of the butt-ugliest fugley in the world! You couldn't pay even the ugliest mutant to stare at th …! Geez…!"

"But what about his message and stuff," asked Vicki. "The guy in the bunny suit, he was able to transmit data through light. _He used our own secret data-channel!_ Nobody's supposed to know it. Like, and the people who programmed it into us are dead!"

"Yeah, yeah…" commented Vanessa. "I'm more pissed off that Mr. Psycho Demon-Rabbit hit us with _radiation. _And did you catch that freaky _voice_? It sounded like six dead humans with rotten necks trying to talk. It was all like… _R-r-rgh… _"

"Ew-w-w!" exclaimed Vicki. "Like, cut it out! That creepy guy's voice is probably gonna cause me nightmares for a hundred years! It's like it's all distorted and freaky. I'm still trying to figure out how he knew how to _communicate _with our infrared data-channel." Her face took on a very serious look. "About the data he transmitted, at least now we know where that jerk is hiding."

…

Vicki and her Sister began to stride towards the entrance to the fence. Doing so brought them out and away from the abandoned industrial area they called home. As they walked, Vanessa spent about as much time looking up at the sky as she did at her surroundings. Still, Vicki had that feeling that there _was _something wrong with the sky. Or was that just in her dream?

Happy blue sky or not, she still felt something was wrong with everything now. The sky in her dream was a darkened sky, rimmed at the western horizon with a reddish-swath of glowing clouds. Thank goodness it wasn't dark yet. It was because those short guys would come out when the land was dark. And this time, if they didn't stop it, maybe the land would have its final end…

…


	18. Chapter 18

_Circle of Fate and Pain _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 18—Cosmic Afternoon

1.

…

The rest of Tire-Wire alley wasn't especially crowded, just the usual crowd. There was the usual small and scattered group of Motorball business executives—trickling in from the part of Scrap Iron City. What people did for a living was pretty much obvious, looking at their clothes. There were those wearing the business suits, sitting at the pricier outdoor cafes and drinking anything above thirty credits. Then there were those going to the bars and drinking whatever, the cyborgs who still wore the coveralls of work. Except, there were fewer coveralls-and-factory sort of people than there were of those businessmen and their pricey beverages. Tire-Wire Alley is a neighborhood of restaurants, music clubs and—of course—drinking bars! Those with the prolonged industrial jobs were off at work. At least, that was true of those lucky enough to have jobs.

"Come on, sis!" insisted Vanessa, pulling her reluctant sister along. "The Netman's over there, and I wanna confirm our victim." She looked around, a look of disgust on her face and holding her shoulders in a shrug--as if to shrink from those nearby. "Some of those fleshies are staring me up too much, like we're meat or something. It's like they've never seen anything like a female before. One of these days, I'll show 'em something to look at—like showing them their own livers once I've ripped it out of their guts!" She then wriggled her fingers as if she longed to snatch out her switchblades.

"Hold on a sec! Like, just calm down!" said Vicki, stopping on this sidewalk and looking somewhere. She knew her sister Vanessa, especially when she was getting to be like this. "Let's talk to somebody important first. That girl over there… Doesn't she look familiar? That guy in the bunny suit said something about her."

By _her, _there was no mistaking whothat Vicki was talking about. It could only be that particular large-eyed and elegant girl—petite and pretty, dressed casually in shorts and midriff-baring tank-top with light jacket worn over, her long moonsilk-pale hair flowing to midway down her back. Somehow, her little white sneakers were clean, though the soles looked a bit worn. She was the height of a child, but her sleek feminine figure was that of a young woman. Those that didn't know her would not at all be able to properly guess her age—unless they knew her to be a slight mutant. Only a slight mutant could have eyes like that.

As for the replicate, it was obvious that she had not yet encountered the other one today. Vicki had the definite idea that the next time Sieben met the nightmarish other replicate, it would mean Sieben's destruction. Her body would be crippled, and then Sechs would take off her head. That would be the case. Except now, Vicki knew what to do.

"What…? You mean the girl who looks dressed like a cutesy hiker?" asked Vanessa. "Oh, the way they're talking, I'm guessing the bodyguard is more than just a bodyguard! One's short and cutesy, the other looks like a cyborg prostitute or something! Why bother with a leather skirt or blouse? That skirt's so short and tight it may as not be worn anyway. Cyborgs ought to walk around naked. What do they have to hide? Cyborgs, fleshies… They're all freaky! Sis, why do you put up with em?" She paused. "Hey! She's wearing white sneakers! How can anybody wear anything white in Scrap Town and keep it _white_ around here? Now _that's _freaky."

"I put up with humans because they're people," said Vicki, not acknowledging most of Vanessa's rant. "We need to respect and care about people." This synthetic girl then began approaching that outdoor café-table over there where Kyrie was sitting with her bodyguard. The female replicate tensed somewhat.

Kyrie stopped talking when she noticed Sieben looking in a particular direction. As Sieben was not smiling, neither was Kyrie. The girl used some fingers to brush aide some lengths of her own hair and tilting her head slightly to the right, looking in this direction. "Good afternoon…" she said when Vicki came and stopped. "Pardon my audacious inquiry, but it must be asked. Have we met at a prior engagement? You two seem unusually familiar."

"Umm… It's something like that," said Vicki. "It's like… I don't know." She looked to Sieben—a replicate-girl copied from a cyborg-girl. She couldn't exactly tell her to stay away from fighting. After all, Sieben would fight and defend Kyrie—even fighting to the death. In Sieben's case, it would be… She saw Kyrie lean forward slightly, her pert mouth and large eyes open with concern and worry. _Oh well, may as well lie. Saving Sieben's life, _thought Vicki. _What can I say to her to get her away from the city today? Sechs is going to be here._

Vanessa saw her sister hesitating, so she not-so-gently pushed Vicki aside. Telling lies to cyborgs and humans was her skill. "Hey! Guess what! You live two out in the border-region, right? We saw some mutants were loping around your place. I think they were looking for a way to break in. Yeah, I think they'll get hurt or something if they do. Or they'll wait until tonight. Then they can try and attack people. I think I scared 'em off or something…"

Sieben looked ready to stand up, looked to Kyrie. Kyrie, in turn, looked at her partner. The replicate-girl angrily shook her head—saying, "That's our _home_. The mutants from the mountains of waste usually just leave us alone. Why are they suddenly attacking our home _again?_ What's going wrong with things? It's like everything is starting to go down and stuff."

_If only you knew, _thought Vanessa. She began to say something. "Yeah, and one of the mutants was calling your name…" She looked to Kyrie. "You're _Kyrie, _right? Those mutants have really got messed up mouths, but they were still able to pronounce it… '_Kyr-ie-e-e…'_ said one of the freaks. Gosh, those fleshies were so mutated, it makes _me _admire robots and cyborgs."

"We must go," said the pale-haired girl, uncrossing her legs and standing up. Even standing her full height, Vicki and Vanessa still had to look down to keep eye-contact with her. "Thank you for the words said. Good day to you." A glance went to Sieben, who was already standing. They then were walking away.

And the twin gynoids watched as the pale-haired girl and her dark-haired female bodyguard went away. They were going to watch and be extra-sure that there was not going to be any back-tracking. _You'll hate me, but at least Sieben won't be dead,_ thought Vicki. _You'll both be okay now—I hope. _

"Sis, you suck!" declared Vanessa. "You couldn't lie to save somebody's own life! If we didn't tell those two something, Sieben's head would've been in Sech's big mighty machine-hands in an hour!"

"Like, give me a _break!_" exclaimed Vicki. "I'd rather have them both mad at me instead of Sieben losing her head today…" She softened her tone. "And how'd you know how to mention her father? I didn't get any data about that. Didn't we get the same information?"

"Nope, guess not!" commented Vanessa. "Maybe if your optical receptors were tuned to the right frequency, you would've picked up the data the rabbit-guy transmitted to us.

"It's like this. Kyrie's father pretty much acted like any other human male late into the Twenty-First Century. That's right. He just left his own daughter, went off to some wastelands to 'find himself.' Who knows, maybe he did?" She grinned. "Yeah, he'll find himself…turned into a mutant! That stuff out there in the mountains of junk… Some of it's so contaminated and _radioactive _that even looking at it probably causes all kinds of cancer, will mess up a fleshie's genetic structure in a second!"

"But, like…" added Vicki. "I still don't get it. I was just a few feet from yourself, and…." Her voice was colored with worry as well. Something was wrong. "Oh no…"

Something began to interrupt the flow of traffic. The sound of heavy cyborg-driven shipping trucks had been a sort of steady sound until it began to slow down… Then it stopped. What started next was the sound of the drivers of those vehicles making loud, angry and obscene expressions. Obviously, something was up.

_Hmm? _Vanessa turned around just to see what the Hell Vick was worried about. Of course there were vehicles stopped. At the crumpled fronts of one van that looked as unknowable creatures from the deepest darkness of space came down to smash the front grilles in. An Ancient slang-term came to mind when looking at some of the wrecked vehicles. It was the word _totaled. _As in, those vehicles were totally wrecked.

And the cause of the crazed vehicular damage was standing in plain sight--what a sight…. Thick alloyed shin-guards boots covered the legs beneath the knees--the legs and torso covered in a black bodysuit made up of strange ridges. Attached to the torso were arms that just looked too big: great big machine-arms more fitting a construction vehicle than a torso. The gigantic machine-arms seemed so huge that they looked as if the body ought not be strong enough to hold them. Both hands were clenched into fists--each fist the sixe of a head-sized wrecking ball.

One of those fists so happened to be plunged into the metallic front-end of a truck. That truck was _totaled. _Behind it was another truck that happened to run into the first one. Behind that truck, a few more trucks suffered from impact. One blow stopped an entire row of heavy vehicles.

To this, the wild-haired head on the nightmarish thing had a look of maniacal glee. Its scraped, roughened synthetic face had a huge and vicious grin. And one eye was missing--replaced with a screw. That figure in the black suit could only be one thing: Sechs.

"_R-r-r-gh…!_" declared the nightmarish replicate, ripping its right fist from the metallic innards of the truck. "_Y-y-you!_ I _know _you two just spoke to a certain replicate! Tell me where they went, or I'll _rip _off your heads and use your bones to make a table! And on that table, I'll make a tablecloth of your own skin--your heads as ornaments!

A quick breeze, a sudden thought, and Vicki instantly knew what to do. She screamed, "Hey, _Netmen! He-e-elp! _Some crazy person is wrecking Factory property! Now it's gonna try to take our brains!"

"W_hat!_" shouted Sechs. "I shall destroy you and…" _F-f-fw-w-wish-h-h…_ A flash of flame, and then there was a missile-fast streak of gray. The results were amazing.

Sechs _exploded_ quite nicely. The huge machine-arms sort of collapsed to the left and right in the midst of the fireball, while the legs, shin-guards and assorted metal body parts flying in all directions. The explosion lasted long enough to glow into a bright golden glow cast onto nearby buildings. _Thunk-k-k… _That was the sound of the replicate's charred head landing in the middle of the street.

…

2.

…

There was the sound of a friendly neighborhood Net-man robot trundling on over here. Its rubbery-chubby face typically blank. "Thank you for reporting a breach of Factory Law. Your cooperation is appreciated. To claim your reward in a timely manner, please cash in the head at your nearest Factory outlet!"

To that, Vanessa began to saunter over to where Sech's angry and smoking head lie on the street. As the artificial girl walked, there was an entirely inappropriate sway to her hips in tight jeans, her biker-boots clacking on the street.

Vanessa then bent over at the waist and put her hands on her knees. Of course some of the male population was staring. This time, she meant for that. "Well now!" she said to the Sechs replicate's head. "We won't be needlessly going around to slaughter fellow replcates anymore, huh? I know, I know… You're probably saying that this is some kinda time-paradox thingy or something, wondering how you can be killed here and now when you were supposed to do so much stuff with somebody named Gally…

"But do I care about time travel stuff? Hell no! All that matters to me is cash. That, and we're keeping you from helping some short freaks in disassembling reality." The replicate's severed head tried talking, mouth moving. "Huh? What's that? You don't know what I'm talking about? Hmm… Let me help you."

The artificial girl then bent over even farther, her body poised oh-so-deliciously, buttocks pressing the tight jeans as her hands grabbed the crazy dark hair of Sech's head. Straightening to stand, she said to the head, "We get rid of you, it'll be one less piece of the circle…" At this point, Vicki walked up to stand by her sister, also staring at Sechs' head. "Say, Sis… Let's go cash this thing in. It ought to at least worth a new shirt. A cheap one, but it's something."

…

A half-hour later, Vicki and Vanessa rode the back of a truck to Tire-Wire alley after a foray deeper into Scrap Iron City. The truck stopped at an intersection amidst a healthy hustle-and-bustle of people walking along sidewalks, the noise of people and vehicles mixed in with distant sounds of restaurants playing music. It was good to be back to where there were people walking around, being lively. Both hopped off the back, and Vicki walked up to the front-cab of the vehicle to pay the man. She also said, "Thanks again for the ride."

They both now had an extra item added to their biker-styled outfits; now there were purse-sized backpacks on their backs. They needed the little backpacks just because the pockets of their leather jackets were far too small to carry all the _credit chip bounty _they earned for reporting destruction of Factory property. Indeed, destruction of the Factory's means of production was a heavy crime. The gynoids therefore obtained a heavy bounty for stopping such a thing.

It wasn't that the synthetic girls needed the ride. Having artificial bodies meant having robotic levels of endurance: unlimited endurance. But Vanessa just wanted to hire a ride just because she could. They now had more money than they knew what to do with. Vanessa just felt like spending some cash

"Hell yeah," cheered Vanessa as she walked with her sister. "Being a tattle-tale is a too-easy way to make some hot and heavy cash. About the only thing I regret, Sechs was a robot—just like us. But hey… Shouldn't have crossed _me!_"

Vicki said nothing immediately. She didn't really like the idea of killing for money, not at all. Yet she _knew _that bounty hunting was the only legitimate means used by this city in order to have some kind of law enforcement. There was no such thing as _police _anymore—not since the days when she and her sister were prototypes created by a blonde-haired smiling man and his team of robotic scientists. That was centuries ago, when the land was untouched by nuclear weapons, earthquakes and obliteration. So long ago…

"Hey Sis! _Hell-o-o! _Where's your mind at?" pointedly asked Vanessa. She waved her right hand in front of Vicki's face—making her blink. "I know we've taken the occasional hit in the head every so often, but that's why our nanobots keep fixing us up. Your thought processors getting screwed up or something? Maybe you need a drink."

Vicki ignored the drink comment. Vanessa usually liked going to rough-looking bars and enter drinking contests with the patrons—who had no ideas that they were getting into a drinking contest with a robot. It was one of many ways Vanessa used her own human appearance to take advantage of people. Vicki could do the same, chose not to do so because she cared about people. "When are we going to start caring about people?" she asked.

"Wooh… So _that's _your software malfunction?" asked Vanessa. "It's an attack of consciousness, huh?" She wrapped an arm across Vicki's shoulders and leaned close—also taking her to a side of the sidewalk. They now stood near the wall of a particular store-front business—a large picture-window looking outward.

"Like, I don't care as much about the meat-bags as you do," continued Vanessa. "But they've got some use to 'em. Particularly, their brains are good for cash. Their blood will probably make luxurious skeletal joint-lubricant some day, too." Vicki's eyes went wide. "Just kidding! Anyway, I _do _care. But we do what we have to do to survive… Right? And if we didn't get that Sechs-thing blown up, she…he… Whatever it was, it was gonna chop off _our _heads. Do you _know _how long it would take our internal nano-swarms to fix us up after _that_?"

Head bowed, Vicki nodded. "Yeah… You're right…" she conceded. "Still, it's like so many people keep dying. People are still gonna keep dying. And… And something bad could still happen. I had a dream last night…"

"Like, _come on, _Sis! Dreams are software malfunctions!" exclaimed Vanessa. "We don't even _need _to sleep. We're gonna have to yank that bit of human emulation out of you one of these days—when the meat-bag humans get the technology to work on us again. Still, dreams don't mean anything. So you dreamed the world was gonna get nuked by some kind of karma bomb… It's not like this world wasn't nuked before!" Swish-_flick! _

An eighth of a second, and something was now different. The _swish _was the sound of Vanessa quick-turning right, and the _flick _was the sound of both her switchblades being clicked into life—the sharp blades gleaming hard silver and sharp. "Hey, bitch! Didn't anybody ever tell you _not _to butt in on a family discussion?"

Standing there was a dark-haired replicate-girl—just their height and looking just their physical age, dressed in new leather skirt and tight-fitting top with an open jacket. Except, Sieben was no more actually a young woman than Vicki and Vanessa were human. It was all appearances. Sieben's wide-eyed look appeared to show more sadness than fear—no reaction to Vanessa switchblades. Actually, she was looking into Vicki's eyes. "Like, I had the same dreams," she said to Vicki. "Someone killed the world."

"Well, hey, you can thank us for blowing up Sechs later," said Vanessa. _Fwick! _Her hands blurred, the switchblades seeming to vanish. "And about the sun changing color and those short muscular midget-guys, we don't know anything about that. That's all crazy fantasy that belongs in human brains, not in nice and reliable thought processors. Now please leave us alone?"

Vicki looked at her sister. Vanessa seldom acknowledged anything pertaining to dreams or imagination. "You too?" she asked. Vicki didn't say _anything _about those aspects of the dream she had. As far as Vanessa cared, it was just a dream—if it was a dream. "How did you know?"

"What is this, a meeting of the Psychic Friends Network?" asked Vanessa. "Okay-okay, maybe I caught a little glitch or something in my head, too. Maybe we all had the same software glitch at the same time…" Vanessa looked to Sieben. "You're a GR-model replicate, right? Your brain's a computer, too. You'll know what I'm talking about."

Sieben looked at Vicki. "Jack Bent is the one who's going to make it happen," she said. "He's the carrier. If he doesn't carry the ball, he can't make another round happen. We'll have to kill him."

"Kill Jack Bent," said Vicki. The look of human compassion once in her eyes was now gone. There was now the data of what would happen if Jack Bent continued to live. It was only logical: to prevent future death and destruction, one man would have to die. He would not know why he had to die at this point in time. It was simply the digital truth that he _did._


	19. Chapter 19

_Circle of Fate and Pain _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 19—Blood of Karma Pulls the Sunset

Three female figures moved along the main street of this border-town neighborhood. They were three female figures confident with what they had done, confident with what they were going to do. They moved along with legs striding, their backs straight and arms carelessly swaying. Vicki, Vanessa and Sieben—all three were of the same height, all three of them with similarly large eyes, their faces stern and artificially stoic. The eyes… There was something dark and strange about their eyes. Someone was going to die today.

And bystanders knew that as well. The only reason anyone would dare walk boldly down the street of Tire Wire Alley could mean _only _trouble: not a parade, not a part—just _trouble. _Fights and other kinds of trouble did not happen too often in public in Tire-Wire Alley because there were very often more than a few Netmen around to keep robotic eyes on things. Tire-Wire Alley was still a minor part of Scrap Iron City, and Scrap Iron City always had some kind of trouble. And from the looks of those three girls striding in lock-step, something was most certainly going to amount to trouble. Somebody was going to die today. The people standing on sidewalks were feeling glad that it was not to be them.

The crowd was murmuring. People were pointing, looking at the trio striding boldly along the center of the street. "_Isn't that a GR replicate?_" said a snatch of conversation. "_Who are those two girls walking with it?_" That voice, and many other voices, showed the level of concern about what was going down. Maybe there would be a panic. Maybe people would start running when the trouble hit. Whatever it was, this was certainly not going to be a typical daily event.

That trio of females took a sharp right turn and began walking in the direction of one person. That's right; here they come… And the people walking much preferred to not be in their way. Those three were going after one man. Everybody else was clearing the path.

That curly haired man in tee-shirt and slacks noticed the unusual behavior of the crowd right away. Some people in front began to walk a little faster. Some people to his left took a few quick steps to be away from him. Came the thought, _What the heck is going on here!_ When he stopped walking to look around, the people behind him _also _stopped—looking at him, some looking in the direction of the street. He looked.

What he saw, three girls in leather-and-jeans were coming up on him: two of them just with leather jackets and leather boots to go with jeans and tee shirts, one of them in a leather skirt with tight-fitting top. Two of the females were fleshies as far as he could tell. But the third one… That was a GR replicate—a sleek body of alloys. From the looks in their eyes, he could tell that all three of the females were coming to _get _him.

Yeah, the _looks _in their eyes was an especially familiar one. He saw that _look _in the eyes of cyborg bounty-hunters on some occasions. Even when not bounty-hunters, that was the sort of look in cyborg's eyes when they were regarding a fleshie they particularly wanted to not be alive any more. It was that _I-am-going-to-take-off-your-head _look.

Any other time, any other day, any other healthy heterosexual male would certainly admire and appreciate the idea of three lovely ladies stepping in his direction. This was not any other time, nor was this any other day. Jack Bent could certainly appreciate the looks of the femals' body-shapes. But if he stood there any longer to appreciate their beauty, he would not remain healthy for long! Then came a voice to interrupt his mind.

_The ball carrier fumbles,_ came the resonating voice of someone familiar. It was enough to make Jack Bent pause. It was _that _thing's voice—the voice of the cyborg-faced being in the bunny suit. _It's so horrible, such a terrible sight, so dark… _

The fact that he was hearing that voice again was enough to make him make a _run _for it! They were going to kill him. "Hell-l-l _no!_" exclaimed the curly haired man in tee-shirt and slacks. Then he tried to do what any other healthy male would do in a similar situation. The situation was, three artificial females were coming for his head. The action was, he ran.

Or he _tried _to run. There was no getting away from three females with nuclear-powered bodies, such bodies capable of traveling over a hundred kilometers per hour on flat surfaces. Meanwhile, a human raised up in the chemically contaminated vicinity of Scrap Iron City could hope to run a paltry five kilometers per hour…on a good day. Further true was how Jack Bent's brain was just a sloppy chunk of gray think-meat that needed sleep, needed food, was always subject to the comforts of the body. The brain was no match for three females with computer-brains tat worked a _Hell _of a lot faster when it came to reflexes. This man was as good as slaughtered from the very second he moved his right leg to start a run.

Those computer-brains of the females processed Jack Bent's first maneuver. Their computer-brains interpreted the kinetic energy applied with the movement of Jack Bent's leg-muscles verses the amount of inertia inherent in a male body of moderate muscular build: six feet in height, 250 pounds of mass. This data was cross-referenced with the maneuvering capabilities of two gynoids with artificial muscle tissue and the electromechanical agility of a GR replicate.

All three females _moved. _All of _that _happened before Jack Bent could go into his first stride. By the time his left foot _whapped _the concrete of the sidewalk, there was a blur of movement from the replicate-girl. Something else _whapped _the concrete.

Then he was lying chest-down on the sidewalk. His jaw was a mess, dribbling blood. Both ankles felt useless. There were crackling sounds when he tried to move his feet. There was no pain yet as the shock of the injuries was so severe.

Flopping onto his back made him look up at three humanoid females with inhumanly cold expressions on their faces. No chance… The human had no chance. A sloppy glob of human brain in a human body of weak and slow meat meant there was really almost no chance at all. And he knew this. This was the end of Jack Bent: small-time criminal, fun-loving bar-hopper, anachronistic adventurer.

Then, the most obnoxiously irrelevant things began to run through his mind, the dumbest things a person could think in this situation—like how the sunny sky above had clouds going by, how it made the girls' smooth skin look beautiful…even if their skin was synthetic. Never mind the facts that three were achingly beautiful, dressed provocatively. In fact, from this angle, he could just barely see quite a ways up Sieben's leather skirt—not that there would really be much to look at but metal, thank-you-very-much! All three of the females had nice bodies, of course: designed for beauty as well as human-killing functionality. Nice girls… These were nice girls that were just so polite and caring to human beings otherwise—at least two of them were. Nice-and-pretty girls don't obliterate the bones of your jaw, nor are they supposed to shatter your ankles. And nice-and-pretty girls don't reach down to grab you by the head…

One of the pretty girls actually did. Sieben did. One of her metal hands _gripped_ the top of Jack Bent's head—a head of curly hair. "_Augh…!_" he yelled, using his arms to sit himself up as the _pain _dug into the sides of his skull. "No-o-o-o! Don't kill me! Don't…kill…me…!" he yelled as his eyesight hazed over with redness and dizziness, the pain in his head increasing.

Somewhere in the haze of redness and swirling pain, that voice communicated with him. _It is soon time to pass the ball. _Or he _imagined _those words being said. When it came to communication from the six-foot, cyborg-faced creature in the bunny suit, it was hard to tell if it was talking the words—or if a person was _imagining _those words being said. _It hurts at first. Then you won't care even if it is your fault. It will be your fault in the universe. The end is the beginning._

What was real, and what was imaginary? Certainly _not _imaginary was the fact that there was a metal hand with a grip that went all the way 'round his head. It was real. The pain was real for him. And the fact that they were going to rip off his head was real. As for the six-foot cyborg-faced creature in the bunny-suit, that was probably in his head—a head being squeezed, skull cracking…a mind full of pain The metal hand began to turn and twist Jack Bent's head on his neck.It was rotation… Just then, he…_understood what was happening._

Understanding…of this came to him in a flash of revelation. It was as bright and blazing as the nuclear-bright glare of light he once saw glaring from the creature's right eye. The end and beginning go around, to go around…to go around… Hell yes… Jack Bent understood the truth It really _was_ going to be his fault if they killed him.

He had to keep himself from being taken away because those short muscular bastards were nearby and waiting. Oh yes, they were just _waiting _for him to be dead. Then they would take him… And once they took him, _they _would make things start happening. Now Jack Bent understood. Now he didn't want to die. "_Don't kill me!_" screamed the man. "_You don't understand what's happening here!_"

The female replicate paused. "The ball carrier must die" came a hard voice, mouth and lips moving. There was no human expression on her pretty face, a synthetic face. And Sieben's face seemed even more synthetic as she began to twist Jack Bent's head even more to the right. The grip tightened, sounds of skull-bone _cracking _in places.

There was neither satisfaction nor disgust shown on the face—even when there was a gurgling sound as a metal thumb sank into an eyeball. This thumb in the eye-socket provided extra grip when the head had to be twisted some more. It made for a meaty _crunkle _of sound as the vertebrae broke. This was followed by an awful wet ripping sound as the round part of the human body was separated from the rest of the meat—the part that contained the glob of brain-matter. Jack Bent's headless body was on knees for a moment…then collapsing to fall.

…

2.

…

Cashing in Jack Bent's head was business as usual, though the reward was unusual. It so turns out that the man had dozens of crimes that somehow didn't get posted on bounty lists: destruction of Factory property, destroying human brains, smuggling machine-parts technically capable of powering flying machines… He broke all of the few laws imposed by the Factory and lived to do it again—until today. The Deck-Man that handed out the rewards had to reach for the huge sacks of credits three times.

Sieben walked the short distance with Vicki and Vanessa again into Tire-Wire Alley. It was back to the neighborhood at the edge of Scrap Iron City--where Motorball players and sports executives with too much money came to listen to musicians and eat at bars and restaurants. Things were a little more frenzied along the main drag of the neighborhood, a little more easygoing. It had its share of troubles… But it was as good a neighborhood as any to live.

Still, there were some troubles--the sorts of troubles that could be killed for bounty-money.The nearest Factory-based facility for accepting bounty-heads was especially close to the border-town neighborhood: very convenient for those who wished to take Factory money for the killing of those who violated Factory law. Of the three females, only Vanessa was happy and smiling: This was the second time today that there was a massive amount of cash given. That, and she actually liked killing meat-bag humans.

Humans were a waste of energy. They have sloppy and inefficient meat-bodies, pathetic fleshy brains, always getting sick and hurt at the slightest thing! She sometimes fantasized about the day when all the fleshies died off due to pollution and suffering, leaving a strong, efficient and _clean _world of sleek-bodied cyborgs and replicates.

The replicate-girl interrupted Vanessa's fantasizing. "Hey… Like, Kyrie's waiting for me," she said. "She's got some temporary people protecting her right now, and some people are really nice… But she only trusts me to really keep her safe."

"Fine by me," said Vanessa, hefting a hefty bag of cash. The credit-chips jingled like jewels and precious metals of long ago. "If you're ever in town again and want to kill somebody, gimme a call! I've got plenty of cash, the more the better. Don't know about my _sister, _though…" The artificial girl looked sideward at her twin sister.

To that, Sieben glanced at Vicki--whose eyes were downcast. They had already told her their secret--that they were actually robots designed to pass for human, robots made hundreds of years ago. They were from a gentler, more civilized time in human history. It was a time when public governments to help keep people clean and safe, even running places called "schools" to make children smart and healthy.

There were also local people called "police." And violators of the laws were put in "prisons" instead of having their heads cut off and cashed in. Murder and violence was actually rare in some parts of the world because of that system. That kind of world was long-gone, obliterated with nuclear war, earthquakes and the subsequent times of anarchy that followed. The sadness in Vicki's eyes meant that she was not at all happy to live in this time.

Sieben would have much liked to be friends with Vicki--just to ask about that time.

"Well… Okay," said the replicate-girl. "But it doesn't have to be for bounty hunting. Kyrie and I, we--like--come to town once a week. It's this part of town because not so many people think Kyrie's weird. People give her funny looks because of her hair and her eyes… And they get confused when they can't tell if she's a kid or an adult. She's an adult."

"Hey, _yeah_!" voiced Vanessa. "What's up with your girlfriend, anyway? My eyes can detect hair-dye from twenty meters away, and her hair's really that color. And why is her skin so pale? Most every human around here has a tan… How can she be so pale?"

_Kyrie is a slight mutant… _Sieben opened her mouth to say that. But she wasn't able to say that because…a feeling came over her. The circular radiation warning symbols turned on deep within her mind: that circular symbol with three triangles pointing inward. Something is happening, she thought. Something bad is still happening.

_It was_ the cyborg-faced figure in the bunny suit--six feet tall, furry body, the front of the head consisting of electromechanical workings in the shape of a face. It stood there while invisible radiation filled the local neighborhood. Indeed, something dark was still happening…because he was standing there

_People around here began to react to the creature's presence as well. _"_Aa-a-ugh…!_" screamed a man walking by. Even as he screamed, he clutched his chest and fell to the sidewalk to twitch. Some cyborgs began to stagger quickly away from the man and too frightened to help. A few more people collapsed to the sidewalk as well. That was the beginning of the panic.

Somebody shouted "_Radiation leak!_" That's all it took. People then started running _everywhere. _Cyborgs in casual and stylish clothes were making runs for opposite ends of this street. Running feet and pushing arms made for the crowd becoming tumultuous. What was once a calm and everyday scene soon became a stampede. More people were running left, some more running to the right. A few were even trampled underfoot by footwear--some of that footwear worn by people with electromechanical bodies. Not everybody exactly knew what the Hell was going on, but they knew that _something _was happening. _Radiation _was bad news.

But at the center of the madness, there was calm. There were four figures unaffected by the kind of high-level _radiation _that now pervaded this place. Sieben stood here, staring at the figure standing on the city sidewalk--near the opening of an alley. The twin gynoids were also standing here. All of them were looking at the six-foot figure with the electromechanical cyborg-face.

"_Why are you here!_" exclaimed Sieben. "We did everything you told us to do!" She raised her left arm, left hand gesturing in the figure's direction. "_You're _the one putting radiation everywhere! Why are you hurting people?"

"Hey, is that guy trying to hurt us?" asked Vanessa. "Hah! My sister Vicki and I, we've got skin and synthetic muscle tissue to block four times the radiation you're putting out." She leaned a bit on her left leg, then she crossed her arms--the sleeves of her leather jacket creaking slightly. "Tell you what. Tell me why the Hell you're wearing that stupid bunny suit, and maybe we won't have to kill you for damaging Factory property. All that radiation you're putting out can't be good for nearby machinery…besides ourselves, of course."

"My sister will kill you if you don't listen," said Vicki. "Too many people died already today. I don't want to see any more dead. Who are you, anyway?"

The cyborg-faced figure in the bunny suit responded, _We have met before and again. _It was still the resonating communication of the metallic voice. _We will make it stop. _That said, the figure in the bunny suit put its own furry hands to the sides of its own head.

_Click-k-k…_went some little parts on the right side of the head. _Click-k-k…_went some other little metal parts on the opposite side. Some deep-glowing red lights came on in the mask's eyes. There was a florescent-bright flashof light as soon as the seal was broken. _R-r-r-ip…_ Some kinds of connections with flesh were broken as well when the furry hands pulled a bit more. Those furry hands then lowered the front-part of the electromechanical head--which was a very sophisticated mask, holding it in the right hand. This revealed the wet, death-pained face of Jack Bent. His right eye was gone--now instead a wet socket with darkness in it--a darkness darker than the universe.

Next came the bunny suit—to be taken off as well. Like the mask, the figure disconnected parts of the bunny suit. There were more _click _sounds of strange machine-parts being undone. There was more to that bunny suit than just a fuzzy appearance, then. It was as if strange machinery had been _grown _into the bunny suit…

So peeled off, the bunny suit was soon a strange heap at his feet. Now he stood there dressed in tee-shirt and slacks—the clothes ruined with dark wet spots where the flesh bled blood…if that could be called blood. His upper body still had lumps of tumors, especially his abdomen--a deep red glow coming from there. Said the resonating dead voice, _The ball carrier continues! _

"Like, you're dead!" exclaimed Sieben. "What the Hell! We _killed_ you. Your head went into that hole in the Factory building. I saw it go into the…" _Into a dark hole._ Exactly, they cashed in Jack Bent's head. As for what happened to the body, they did not care. The head went down a hole, not to be seen again…until now.


	20. Chapter 20

_Circle of Fate and Pain _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 20—The End is The Beginning

1.

…

_I know who we are now, _said the distorted voice. Come to think of it, the distorted voice was a great deal like that of Jack Bent. Now, Sieben felt downright _dumb_ for not having recognized Jack Bent's voice all of this time—all of this time running into Jack Bent and, every so often, the being in the bunny suit. Also true was how Jack Bent was six feet tall when he stood up straight. Yes, and the figure in the bunny suit—six feet tall. Jack Bent and the figure in the bunny suit: one and the same, though one was from the past and one was from the future. Things were beginning to make more and more sense to Sieben. Dumb… "I'm feel really dumb," she muttered.

"Yeah! Like, how could we have been _so-o-o _stupid!" exclaimed one of the twin gynoids. "Like, we couldn't see this before!"

"It's over! Like, it's totally over!" yelled the other twin. "It was a pattern all along… A big, stupid-headed pattern. We just walked _right _along with it and helped it along. And here we were, trying to keep all of this insane crap from happening."

_Trying to stop it, we started it,_ thought Sieben. _When we cashed in Jack Bent's head. They put it down a hole_.

Whatever happened to Jack Bent's head in that dark hole in the Factory office-building, his head was now well-attached to his body—a body now ruined and lumpy with cancers and open sores caused by exposure to extensive _radiation_. Now the ruined figure of Jack Bent raised one of those arms lumpy with cancers, the left arm, left fist clenched in anger. His right eye-socket took on a deep and troubling glow of inner radiation.

Then came that now-familiar distorted voice—Jack Bent's distorted voice. _It matters not where or when you go, we will find you and bring you to the truth. _The glow from his right eye-socket glowed brighter than daylight. _Satyagraha! _

With that said, that was when the muscular midgets in gold coveralls began coming out from everywhere. _Whamp! _A section of sidewalk suddenly flipped open like the sinister lid of a dark, evil Jack-in-the-box toy—except the things that came out were not plastic friends of amusement. Some more of the short muscular midgets in gold coveralls started coming out from darkened windows of some abandoned buildings. They started dropping from above, landing _thump-thump-p-p _onto the sidewalk. Even more of them came hobbling out from the alleyway behind the darkened figure of Jack Bent. "_Elkric!_" they cheered. "_Elkric-oblamah!_"

This time, something was different about them all… Tools, they _all _had tools. Some of them had rusty metal pipes, greasy with strange oils. A few more of them had unusual red-colored power-tools that vaguely resembled drills and jack-hammers—yet had semi-circular attachments. Those power tools also had the _radiation _symbol on them: that symbol consisting of a circle with three yellow triangles inside. These men in gold coveralls began to systematically obliterate this neighborhood.

_Whank…! Whank… Wwhank-_whank-k-k! Rusty pipes and the jack-hammers went to work by striking the sides of buildings. Some of them were using rusty pipes to begin smashing buildings. _Brak-kak-kak-kak-kak…! _That was the high-powered sound of strange nuclear-powered street-breakers with the large chisels on the end. Sieben could tell they were nuclear-powered because she saw the _radiation _symbol on them. _Chunk… Chunk… _A few more of the short bastards had hammers so big that it took teams of four to swing up, over and _down. _

"_Elkric…_" Wham! "_Oblamah!_" they exclaimed as they worked. And to Sieben's ears, they _also _had voices sounding like distorted versions of Jack Bent's voice—though higher-pitched. "_dooble-brink!_" This was amidst the chaotic and mad sounds of destruction they continued wreaking havoc. Some of the muscular midgets then turned to look in this direction, where Sieben stood with Vicki and Vanessa.

Both twins backed off somewhat. Certainly, their bodies would repair themselves after almost anything that could be done to them. It was how they were able to remain "alive" for the past few hundred years. But programmed into both artificial girls was a drive for self-preservation—the idea of not getting into situations that would result in them being damaged. Injury and damage were _exactly _what those short freaks in the gold coveralls intended. While the rest of their fellow muscular comrades were at work in obliterating the local neighborhood, those six were now approaching… The obvious thing to do was _run like Hell._

They did so. Vicki and Vanessa turned to run, as did Sieben. Came the call from behind them, "_Elkric, oblamah!_" Even more of them began hobbling as fast as they could in pursuit as they carried those massive tools that seemed to take all of their powerful musculature to carry. Either the short men in gold coveralls were exactly muscular because they hefted those massive metal tools, or they were _created _to be muscular for the sake of using the tools. And they knew how to use them well, _radiation _and all.

The three females were well-away from the place where the darkened figure of Jack Bent stood. For Sieben, things were now becoming a chaotic blur. They were moving so fast that the building and pavement resembled a blur. Left and right, the short men were bumbling and amassing after them. Some of them stopped wrecking this neighborhood just long enough to turn and start stepping onto the sidewalk. Sieben had to dodge swung jack-hammers, leap over holes in concrete—and more. Vicki and Vanessa were dodging and moving as well, still going blur-fast. Then… Somewhere in the blurry craziness, Sieben saw Kyrie walking towards an alley up ahead.

"_Kyrie!_" shouted Sieben. "Wa-a-a-ait!" But even as fast as Sieben ran, she _still _saw Kyrie slowly stepping into a darkened alleyway. Here Sieben was, running over a hundred miles per hour—according to sub-systems within her mind. Still, it seemed as if Kyrie was walking way up ahead and moving calmly. It looked as if Kyrie was sleepwalking, still moving faster than Sieben's machine-fast legs.

Sieben leaned backwards as she scraped to a halt—the synthetic rubber soles of her boots becoming heated. In fact, she had to turn around and run back to the alley and turn right, going into it. In the depths of the darkened alley was pretty and petite Kyrie. The girl was like a pale-haired living doll, dressed in white silk-like shorts and blouse—her long moonsilk-colored hair fluttering in alleyway wind, slender right arm reaching, her fingers touching to open a metal door. _ If she goes into that door, I'll maybe never see her again, _thought Sieben.

So thinking, Sieben dashed madly into the darkness of the alleyway—both eyes locked on Kyrie. Vicki and Vanessa were somewhere behind maybe—or maybe not. The replicate-girl then dashed alone into the door left open by Kyrie, a door opening into _darkness. _She realized her mistake just as the _darkness _swallowed her in. It was that darkness darker than the universe…

…

Sieben was in the darkened night-club. It was _that _particular place. There was the band set up on the slightly raised stage to the right, light shining down on it. A spotlight was also shining down on Sieben herself. There was a third spotlight shining in the darkness—shining on Kyrie sitting at the table. Something was atop the table--a round object, red in color.

_Don't do it, _thought Sieben. A _radiation _warning symbol appeared in the lower-left corner of her electronic vision. _Please don't pick up the ball. _"Don't do it!" screamed Sieben. Except…Kyrie did anyway, the look on her face the look of someone sleepwalking with a slight smile. The _radiation _intensified. It finally intensified to the point where everything…_was finally overcome with a final glare of neon whiteness—everything being glared out. It was like being in the presence of a nuclear blast, only this blast seemed to burn open the fabric of reality… _

…

_Hmmph… Hmmph! This is quite a delicious bowl! I most certainly need it! Jack, did you successfully obtain all of the data? I truly mean that, for all of the data shall be of use. All of the data from this experiment is as precious as each and every drop of this wonderful flan. Mmm… Gulp! _

"_What the Hell…_"mumbled Jack Bent, sitting at a computer terminal in this computer laboratory. "Yes, Dr. Nova. All of the possible extractable data is stored in the corresponding data-tape receptacles. Summary data is being printed up in hard-copy form right now."

Keyboard in front of him, Jack Bent was also dressed in clean slacks and buttoned shirt. Unlike a few other scientists in this laboratory, he was _not _wearing a white laboratory coat. If he wore that, that would be the end of his tolerance for stress. It was bad enough they cut a hole in the back of his head as so they could connect machinery directly to his brain. And it was bad enough that he was risking his own brain for the sake of operating the prototype machinery at all!

It was prototype machinery, new machinery with big components the sizes of vehicle engines—put together in the middle of this laboratory, wires everywhere. In fact, one of those wires terminated in a six-prong part that matched the part that went into the back of Jack Bent's skull. His brain helped run the huge machinery.

This was a very typical laboratory of Zalem. Like most all facilities of Zalem, this particular laboratory was all hard and shiny. The floor was hard and shiny--made of hard and shiny square tiles. All the walls--where they were not covered with machinery--were painted a metal gray, also slightly on the shiny side. To the left and right of the central machine were computer terminals. Jack Bent was the only other person sitting at a computer terminal. The other person was a typical laboratory flunkie--some guy named Smith. Dr. Nova was standing up and having himself yet another big bowl of flan. _Man…! He must have a bottomless digestive tract or something, _thought Jack Bent.

No, he would _not _wear a white lab-coat for the sake of crazy ol' Dr. Nova--even if there was the notion that such a thing was the uniform of this laboratory. After all of the Hell he had been through by way of the Ouroboros prototype computer program, he deserved to at least be free of that requirement. There would be _no _white coats for him!

Jack Bent was now feeling especially on the grumpy side of things. He was still groggy from being immersed in the test subject's simulated reality. In fact, the man was especially groggy especially since a significant percentage of _his _own brain went into generating that virtual reality. That was why part of the back of his head was shaved away. There was a neural interface back there, through which his brain was connected to a computer.

_If old boy Nova is so smart, _he thought, _then why didn't _he _connect _his_ brain to the Ouroboros ptotype? My brain's just about had it with this whacked-out experiment. _For this particular experiment in karma, it took an actual human brain to help run the virtual-reality program--the prototype Ouroboros program. _Sure… Use my brain to simulate a faked-up reality for antoher brain, _he thought. _Who the Hell had the idea of keeping a criminal's brain entertained? _

The brain-in-question was actually in the center of this laboratory's computer equipment: the focus of this particular "brain in a vat" setup. A cylindrical glass case was filled with a saline solution, in which a criminal's brain was suspended. Some hundreds of wires connected the bottom of the brain to outside machinery, this machinery out here. Even more wires went to the hemispherical metal fittings that went over the eyeballs. Two thin cables connected the sides of the brain where the ears were supposed to be.

That was how the brain was fooled into thinking that there was actually a reality around it. The fittings over the eyeballs gave the illusion of seeing the virtual world. Those wires attached to the sides went to generating sound-signals going into the brain. As for the wires attached to the spinal cord, that made for the signals that fooled the brain into thinking it was connected to a body: a body inside of the virtual world generated by the machine. Sight, hearing, everything else--it was all just an illusion. Such was the prototype Ouroboros program.

But this was a _prototype_. Meaning, not everything was perfected. Zalem's computer technology was not quite powerful enough to produce as deep a simulation of reality that Dr. Nova wanted. He wanted a specifically detailed simulation of reality as possible . Hence, there was a connection to a real brain; Jack's brain.

Doctor Nova finally set down his half-consumed bowl of flan just long enough to pick up reams of paper being printed out from the machinery that housed the prototype Ouroboros program. "This is very interesting!" he said aloud. "I only weakly hypothesized a yield within the context of a virtual environment. _This..._is in fact residual readouts from actual fluctuations in karmic levels. The data strongly suggests fluctuation of true karmic levels—especially considering this is the fourth cycle."

Damned right, Jack Bent had run the simulation not twice, not three times... He had to run the thing _four _times—his brain being put to severe strain. Did he even _know _what this crazy machine was doing to his think-meat, the cable connected right into the glob of nerve-tissue responsible for him being a thinking person? This machinery was _prototype. _Meaning, this was maybe the second test. He never was told what happened to the first guy whose noggin was hooked up to these contraptions. Maybe they went psycho and had their think-meat taken out. Maybe those rumors of having a brain replaced with a fancy computer-chip wasn't a rumor after all.

…

2.

…

Ah, who the Hell cares? Hell, Hell, and more Hell to this all. His eyes tiredly blurred a bit out of focus as his attention vaguely wandered up to the fluid-filled glass cylinder at the center of this room. He maybe ought to be glad that at least his brain was _in _his head and not hooked up to all kinds of freaky gadgetry. Or maybe the gadgetry part wasn't too far off from truth? The sore circular metal thing put into the back of his head was a direct feed to the organ of human thought. And when this was over, Jack Bent was thinking of telling Doc Nova to suck a certain part of the human anatomy.

_Yeah, suck it... _As Jack Bent relaxed his tired and pain-worried brain, the thoughts within sort of wandered here and there—wandering about. He was far too tired to maintain any sort of respect or appearance of respect for the gray-haired scientist who had too much fun by hooking brains to machines. Of course, Doctor Nova claimed that the experiment was a test for determining the worth of karma in virtual environments versus karma in reality, whatever the Hell "_reality_"is supposed to be. The _reality _could be that crazy Doc Nova just got his rocks off of screwing around with karma and human brains.

Funny thing... What if _this _wasn't reality? "Heh-heh..." darkly chuckled the curly haired man in buttoned shirt and dress-pants. When the prototype Ouroboros program ran its course—with the assistance of his brain, of course—his brain made the events seem as more real and believable as the believability of a dream. Well, so he had to throw in some cyber-tomfoolery in the form of a few mutants? But those short bastards in coveralls, they seemed just as real as any other joker of Scrap Iron City.

_Just another simulation,_ he thought to himself. "_Hee-hee-hee...! Don't mind this, folks! It's all part of the show,_" he muttered. "_The joke's on her. Then it'll be on us in the end! Elkric, oblamah...!_"

"Did you say something at all?" asked Dr. Nova. Jack Bent just stared. "Nothing it was, then. Then we shall continue."

_They'll continue, alright, _thought Jack Bent to himself. Then came an oh-so-familiar feeling. It was..._a distant pain in his head. "Mmph..." he grunted. Accompanying it was something that felt like a blow to his skull. He'd felt this feeling before, also heard it before—that high-pitched ringing a person heard when in a dark and quiet place. And then..._it passed. "Uh oh," he did say aloud.

It was as if he could _feel _them coming—just as his headache was really getting into his head. That _ke-e-e-e-e _sound of ringing, it wasn't just in his ears. It was a sort of feeling and sound that was actually pressing into his head. Now reality was…_beginning to take on a weak and blurred sort of look to Jack Bent. _This shiny and sleek computer-laboratory was…_getting out of focus. _It was as if the hard lines of reality were_…getting soft. Those little bastards, they're pressing their way into reality, _he thought. _But how…? They're…not…real!_

"What is this?" asked Dr. Nova. "How can this at all be correct?" he asked aloud. "There is a severe deviation from the previous dataset." He looked to Jack Bent. "We must run an inspection on the prototype hardware to find out if there are any errors. After all, it _is _a prototype creation."

Indeed, there was a sharp break in the numbers of of printed data coming out of the printer, the printer connected to the machines around the brain in the case. First came numbers showing karmatronic data. The numbers were nothing but zeroes for the space of six intervals… Then the numbers resumed typical values again. Could these seemingly impossible numbers be the result of error?

But now, Jack Bent had to run a diagnostics on the machinery. When Dr. Nova wanted scientifically accurate results, he wanted them _thoroughly. _It meant that Jack Bent would have to pick up the cable—and hook it up to his brain. _Dang-nabbit…_he thought, picking up the cable from where it was currently coiled within the machine to his right. With a sigh, he bent his head to put the end of the cable into the coin-sized connector at the back of his head.

Here they come, he thought… Some of them came crawling out from underneath some of the square computer terminals. There was sleek and clean air circulation vent set in the upper part of the right-side wall. They _popped _open the shiny metal grating and dropped down to the floor. It was as if some more were hiding behind some of the equipment on wheels—because a few more stepped out from behind there.

About those short guys in coveralls… Of _course _they had overwhelmed this laboratory. They overrode any sort of security measures there could have been. (In fact, there were security-oriented multi-legged robots outside of this very same laboratory. Yet it seemed as if the security robots failed to get in here in time. They did not arrive at all. What was the freakin' use for walking mech-security if it was just going to sit out there and not do anything? They may as well have been wasted chunks of metal. And the short guys in coveralls kept coming until…

"This is an especially irritating development!" dceclared Dr. Nova. "There is almost no place to set down my bowl of off such devantsThere was almost no room to set town his bowl of wonderful, delicious flan…." said the scientist. "Oh, but my bowl shall surely be removed. Shall I save my life? Yet what of the wonderful, delicious flan?"

"_Oh no you don't!_" shouted Jack Bent. He said this…though he himself was being dragged down to be consumed by this crowd of short muscular men in gold coveralls. "You don't know where the Hell they're gonna take your ass! For all you know, you'll end up in some kind of poisonous place all full of _contonaminated _and _radiation…_"

_Bw-e-e-e-ez-z-z-z…! _There was the awful sound of a strange and awful nuclear-powered tool from another world. _Squ-unch!_ That was the strange and awful sound of the tool doing something terrible to Jack Bent. And the awful tool kept doing something terrible. Some of the short muscular men in coveralls giggled in drooling, grotesque glee. "_Oblamah, elkric…!_"

"Gyach…" exclaimed the curly haired man. It was so terrible that it was all he could exclaim. All that he knew was the tool had three rotating parts that sort of drilled into his abdomen and began injecting something. There was not a great deal of blood, believably enough. Funny thing, he didn't feel much pain. By the way, if these short freaks were here, then why the Hell didn't the God-damned _radiation_ detection equipment go off?

_Bee-e-ep… Be-e-e-e-p… Be-e-e-ep…_went an alarm in the laboratory—the _radiation _alarm. _I figured as much, _thought Jack Bent. _The radiation figures into all of this. _

It was a touch bit too late for that, though! At least it sort of blocked out the sound of the muscular midgets' tool drilling into human flesh. He blacked out when the pain was far too much for his already computer-modified brain to take. They took Jack Bent away—somehow working together to drag Jack Bent up into the air circulation vent.

After that, the short men in coveralls surrounded Dr. Nova. The flan-eating scientist looked around. And he continued looking around. He really was surrounded. "_Mmm… Gulp!_" Some of those short muscular men in coveralls fidgeted on hearing his voice. "Did you know that you are in violation of Factory law? Do you understand anything?"

They answered by going straight for him. Thick muscular midget-arms pulled Dr. Nova to the ground, bowl and all. There was the sound of power tools going to work on living flesh. Old boy Nova didn't even scream when they slaughtered him.

Yet Jack Bent didn't scream at all when they _got _him. He was gotten in the same way that older children tell younger children that monsters will _get _them if they misbehave. Yet Jack Bent was sure that he had not been misbehaving. They simply pulled him down. As soon as they did, those power tools and muscular arms went to work in getting _him._

The nuclear-powered drills easily punctured his abdomen. That, while the jack-hammers—designed to punch through concrete—easily punched through the wall of his abdomen. Those power-tools must have hit one of his more important organs…because he now _began to feel himself blacking out._

Jack Bent had the idea…that he was dying. But somehow that didn't matter. At least it didn't hurt too much. Maybe it was better for him to die than for him to be involved with the destruction of the universe. Or maybe he wouldn't be around for when the universe was destroyed. _You know, Nova… You've finally gone ahead and pissed off the wrong sort of people this time, _came the thought. As the little bastards kept working at his internal organs with those strange power tools, digging deeper into his guts, he was able to look over their heads at the brain trapped in the cylindrical tank.

…_Bwe-e-ep! _One of their power tools finally hit another major blood vessel, and…_Jack Bent finally went unconscious. He saw some of the short, muscular midgets going to work on the cylindrical glass case, using those power tools. His sight blurred and faded out in a cascade of darkness…_

…

_There was darkness all around. In the distance was the excited chittering sound of all kinds of strong-looking midgets in coveralls. With them were their power tools. They were somewhere, maybe hiding. Hiding, hidden, the short muscular beings were always ready. And somehow was the idea that the muscular midgets were seeking to do something terrible to her. So thinking, the girl's body was full of panic…_as she pushed herself into awakening_. I do not want them to take my brain! _

"_Ai-i-igh!_" came her shriek. Then she sort of quickly rolled over and lightly dropped to the hard floor. Kyrie was so petite and slender a girl that her movements were almost reptilian in speed. There was the quick impression of something gray trying to grab for her. Her quick dodging movement brought her close to a table, which she leapt over—before dashing over to a corner. There, Kyrie stooped down in the corner and hugged her knees close to herself. "You monsters! You shall not have my brain!"

Before the dollish pale-haired girl could move again, Sieben had already moved in a hurry. She had her arms wrapped around Kyrie—hugging her. "_No-o-o!_" shrieked Kyrie, her voice scraping right into Sieben's right ear.

"Kyrie! Like, _stop this craziness!_" insisted Sieben. "If you don't, you'll hurt yourself again and..." There was a hesitancy in her words. Kyrie was suffering from one of her nightmares again that woke her up—one problem. There was the slight and terrible idea that just maybe Kyrie was right. That led to the distant idea that something else was wrong. A slight and distant whim, it tugged at her. When Kyrie suddenly squirmed, Sieben snapped out of her contemplation just in time to make for enough grip.

"_Release me, demon!"_came Kyrie's shriek. "_I shall not have my brain go to the serving of your master!_" Somehow, Kyrie's voice was enough to get through to Sieben's audio receptors and _hurt_. Who would ever think that such a petite female could have such an insanely loud and intense voice? Then there was how Kyrie called her a _demon_.

"Hey, I'm not a demon... Like, if they ever exist," said Sieben—somewhat lacking conviction in her voice. "The demon is someone else. I'm not the one to look out for. You're safe here. Please make the most of it... _Look around!_"

Kyrie stopped squirming just long enough to do so, just because she wanted to look out for more trouble. There was none, though. There was instead just a view of a typical living-room—even if this place was had the occasional odd contrivance. Kyrie actually fixed up those machines herself. Of _course _this was her living room. This was her living room in _her_ house-building. Memories came back with the strength of strong winds. Also true was how that very same inspirational breeze seemed to have blown away other memories.

And in that moment, Kyrie began to relax in Sieben's hold. She indeed _was _safe from the threats and troubles. Whatever could have been wrong with the world? Nothing was wrong at all now. It was just a nightmare. "It was merely a nightmare," she said, Sieben standing by. "A nightmare with no relation to reality."


End file.
